UK – Day 2: Home again, home again…

Its full of people!

A Bridge over the Thames as we landed

Fish and Chips! Sorry I could not resist getting a bite in

Looks simple, but great fish and chips!

The coach I took from Heathrow to Gatwick

I have done arrived in Eng-er-land

Friday the 13th. This is the day I was to land in London. I awoke from my long sleep and could see on the screen in front of me that I had just over an hour left on the flight. Sweeeeet! I skipped about 8 hours of the flight. I hope I did not snore tooooooo loudly.

🙂

I watched the second part of Hangover pt 3 and walked around briefly before we had to sit to land. I have to say sleeping was great and it made the flight pretty good as I basically missed the bulk of it. We came in over Ireland and then I saw bits of England in between the clouds. Eventually we got to the London area and we got to see some of the London suburbs. No idea exactly where, but I did see a football stadium and some bridges over the Thames. As we landed, I started to feel excited about getting back to England for the first time in 18 months. I think we landed about 2pm London time. Also known as 7am Arizona time.

I still had to get off the plane and get through immigration and customs and then it was not to be over.

Immigration was a piece of cake. They have electronic pass booths for UK passports, so I just used that and was in the UK before I knew what was going on. Weird to not even speak to someone, but certainly makes sense. Too bad the luggage took 30 minutes. But whatever.

Then out into the throng of people waiting to see someone. Anyone but me of course. As I now had to get a ticket for a coach to Gatwick Airport (!). So I did as instructed and got the bus from Heathrow to Gatwick and before I knew it, I was on the bus. The ride was ok and I think I slept again, which cut the ride down. Thankfully, when I finally got off the coach, there was mummy to take me away from bloody airports.

By now, it was dark and we spent a dark evening driving through rainy and foggy roads on the way to Rustington.

Although Mum had carefully made a lovely casserole for us, I spotted a fish and chips place with a huge line outside. I asked if it was good, to which I got an enthusiastic “YES!” I mean, what would YOU do? yup, we had fish and chips for dinner!

For those following along:

• 2 hours shuttle to Phoenix
• 2 hours wait in Phoenix
• 11 hour flight
• 1 hour getting off plane and getting bag
• 1 hour on coach
• 2 hours going to mums

TOTAL:  19 hours

Total miles: 5,500

Prescott, AZ to Rustington, Sussex.

Home, dinner of fish n chips and a rapid coma-like sleep followed shortly after…