I'm currently at Heathrow airport, waiting for a delayed flight to Chicago. I'm guessing the delay is related to the massive amount of fog in London today. I don't want to pay for wifi here so I'll probably not post this for awhile. I've heard more American accents around me at this airport than I have since I was still in the US, I think. Apparently a lot of Americans go to London.
I was unexpectedly upgraded to business class! I got to go through fast track security, which meant very short lines. I'm excited. I think I will get a bed on the plane.
I have been in London only since early yesterday afternoon. I dropped off my things at Emma's house (old friend from way back when I lived on San Juan Island), then wandered around the city a little bit. I took some photos that I will upload to Flickr at some point in the near future.
Some observations about London:
When I arrived at Stansted airport I did not hear as many people speaking English as expected. Emma's neighborhood has a great many signs in Arabic or Farsi too, as well as restaurants advertising halal food. Pretty much everything is in Swedish or English in Stockholm; maybe it's different in the suburbs where I hear many more immigrants live.
Oxford Circus is utterly insane three days before Christmas. So many people shopping. I saw some cool decorations, and did some shopping myself. Didn't buy much though due to things being rather expensive here.
London is much dirtier than Stockholm. This reminded me that Stockholm is a really clean city.
Oh man, so many freaking CCTV cameras. Lots of "If you see something suspicious, tell the authorities" signs in the underground too. I also had to actually go through customs even though I came from an EU country, because Great Britian is not in the Schengen area (I think the UK and perhaps the Republic of Ireland are the only EU/EEA countries that haven't signed Schengen and do not plan to implement it). Britain sure is paranoid. Kind of like the US.
I don't remember tube carriages being so strange. They have a rad shape. Kind of low ceilings though, presumably because the old tunnels weren't made very big. I was glad I'm not tall.
So some time and a lot of miles have passed. I'm now in Chicago. My flight was very nice. Business class certainly makes an eight hour flight much nicer. I did have a bed. Wish I would have slept in it rather than watching movies and Top Gear the whole time. The flight ended up being nearly three hours late to depart, and as a result I missed my connection in Chicago. I have been at O'Hare airport now so far for over seven hours. I slept on a bench a little bit, and am now waiting to board a new flight... to St. Louis. There I transfer and finally get to Seattle some time around 11am PST.
This is the second time I've flown with a stopover in Chicago ever, and the second time I've been stuck in a Chicago airport for an ungodly number of hours due to missing said connection. I think I should take it as a sign and not book flights that stop in Chicago anymore. I am very glad my return trip from Seattle is non-stop to London. Also, my phone doesn't work at all. I suspect that it is not actually quad band, so I'm probably going to have to track down another one somewhere.
