Thursday, April 9, 2009

We're Going To London!!

We just can't believe the time has gone by so fast. When we sent Mary off to London for a semester abroad, we didn't even know if I'd still be employed. Now, we are about to pick her up from her London adventure and I'll be staying an extra 5 days for business with Belron International. Wow, how life is fun!

Our trip began on April 6th, 2009. We felt so blessed to be able to travel and take Emily with us, but there was something far more blessed about the day. It was a bit rainy in PA, and about mid-morning a friendly Jehova's Witness knocked on the door and presented me with a pamphlet about Christ. "A great day to be talking about Christ," I said. She looked into the sky, put her hand out, and said, "Well, the weather isn't that great." "No, I mean April 6th is a great day to be spreading the word about Christ. We believe he was born on this day." She kind of just looked at me (as usual) and moved on. But the message stuck with me. We were about to set off on a great adventure on the advent of the greatest adventure of all time. We felt doubly blessed.

We left for Newark at 3:45p. I had wanted 3:30, Jeanne thought 3:45 would be good and 3:45 it was. We were flying out of Newark at 9:05p on British Airways and would have a 7 hour flight if all things went well. The trip to the airport was flawless, taking only 2 1/2 hours which put us there in plenty of time to get some dinner before the flight.

Emmy opted for Philly Cheese Steak.


We were quite relaxed and satisfied as we boarded the plane and althought our seats were not beds (like the ones in the front of the plane - I've never seen anything like it) they were quite comfortable and even had little built-in head rests.


Each seat had its own little entertainment center with the choice of 7 movies, but we weren't too concerned about that since what we really wanted to do was sleep. Full tummies, comfortable seats, sleep should be no problem. Except that, as soon as we settled in, the attendants wanted to serve us dinner. It was hard to sleep over all the clatter, dinner service finally ended, but Emmy and I were quite awake by then, so she watched Inkheart and I watch Easy Virtue, until sleep finally came. It seems to have lasted at least a couple minutes before an attendant wished to know whether I'd like some breakfast. That couple of hours went quite fast and before you knew it, there out the window was the greenery of Great Britain.


The excitment began to grow as you can tell from the look on Emily's face.


After landing in London, customs was a breeze but a couple things were a little more difficult. Jeanne and Emmy went off to find Emjmy's Oyster Pass for the underground and I went to change my ticket back to the states to accomodate my stay for business. Both of those tasks proved a bit longer than expected and then we tried to meet each other about 50 feet apart, each of thinking we were in the right place and lost a few more minutes until we discovered each other, then we were off to London - on the train!


I just love European train stations. This picture is especially for Clayton who loves trains too.

1 comment:

Mary said...

WEll I'll just live vicariously through both yours and Mary's picture filled blogs. Hope you have a great stay.