Wednesday, January 23, 2008

From SFO to Heathrow to Faversham

OK, so nobody mentioned that the best thing about traveling to Europe would be the bag lunch your mother packs you to take on the plane. Really not kidding here.

I arrive at SFO earlier than necessary, all important items in hand (or rather, super-fabulous-backpack-of-insanity-thank-you-mary). Check large part of backpack, carry on tiny-adorable-detachable-daypack (thanks again mary). Make it through security with FAR less hoopla than when I travel to LA: sweeet. Killing time until the flight boards: so boring but full of bizarre discoveries like: SFO has a Gucci store. They have GUCCI. For Sale. At an AIRPORT. WTF? The Mind Boggles.

Boarding goes entirely uneventfully until they announce we are preparing for take-off. The plane is waaaaaaaaaaaay less than half full! I have two seats to myself, window and aisle, two televisions to myself (which is cool, I did actually use both but it's boring to explain why) and absolutely no people falling asleep on me! yay!

The enjoyability of the flight rapidly deteriorates from there, however. I cannot sleep. At All. I try reading but the flight is too choppy, try changing positions but am completely uncomfortable, despite all my extra space, and within a few hours my nasal cavities are so dried out that it hurts to breathe though my nose. Charming. So during the ten and a half hour flight I listen to music while staring at the constantly updating map and watch three movies: Shattered, The Jane Austen Book Club and Ratatouille. Ratatouille: still a good movie. The other two: highly miss-able. The dreariness of flight is only mitigated by the stellar bag lunch mom forced upon me before I left. Slow roasted pumpkin seeds, a bunch of crackers (like ritz but snobbier, you know, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and stuff), two tangerines and a roast beef sandwich. To contrast with the airplane offerings: soggy, tasteless ravioli and a brownie made of plastic. Mom Rocks!

Despite my way-better-than-average sustenance, I arrive at heathrow a complete zombie. I've only been up for about 20 hours straight at this point which is really not too bad but I've been going on five hours or less a night for over a week so I'm coping really badly at this point. The passport approval lady clearly wants to kill me, I had no idea they would ask me questions that were graded on my level of coherence, I thought that only happened if your passport wasn't in order or something. In her defense, "A lot of stuff" is not a very helpful answer to the question "What do you do for a living?", I am actually too disoriented to realize that customs people do not just make conversation. Ever. Stupid me. Do better next time.

Annoyed lady finally stamps passport and I exit the Terminal to run and find the bus kiosk: No bus to Canterbury for over an hour.Will be late for Helen! National Express Bus Information says maybe try the train. Run Downstairs to the train. Train Information people say the train won't save time, a London transfer to Canterbury will take an hour anyway. Okay, back upstairs to the bus. Buy ticket at kiosk, run downstairs to internet cafe, email Sarah with new arrival time in case calling doesn't work. Run upstairs to wait for bus and try to ring Sarah so she can tell Helen that I will be over an hour behind schedule. Four payphones at Bus Terminal. Excellent. First one seems to only work if you are paying to use it to text somebody. Huh? I am sleep deprived, this is arabic to me. Next one, 40p to make a call, I have a 50p coin, I follow the instructions and dial Sarah. The line is busy and voice that requests that I leave a message is a generic voice. I start to leave a message and I am cut off almost immediately. I try the other two phones, in the process leaving a second message which cuts off halfway through saying the arrival time. As it turns out, all the Bus Terminal phones don't accept coins while a call is in progress (they profess to, but if you add coins they are returned to you immediately without affecting your balance) and they will only accept one coin before you have dialed (I discovered later that if you use a pound coin you get over 90 secs which is perfectly sufficient to leave information albeit expensive). I promise myself after I have slept I will buy a phonecard asap. One of the bus conductors comes over and kindly volunteers that if I put too many coins in the machine and don't use all my time, the change will be returned as long as I use small coins rather than a large one. I explain my dilemma and he is genuinely stumped. "What number are you calling?" he asks. I show him. He waves the paper away "Ah, that's fine, you can use mine". I leave Sarah a proper message using Alex-the-awesome-bus-man's cell phone, thank him profusely and board my bus. One short bus ride, a complex transfer and a longish bus ride later I arrive at Canterbury where Helen and Sarah are waiting! But not for long since they got the messages! We drive to Faversham have a quick bite to eat and I collapse on the bed Sarah has made for me in the study. Bliss! Coming soon: Faversham, Whitstable & Canterbury!

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