I left Toronto on Friday for a nearly two week trip to London, to visit my sister and see family and friends who live in the UK. I woke up early (early for me, Glen was already at the gym), and made breakfast for Glen when he came back in through the door. We said our goodbyes and he went off to work. Poor Glen. I wish he was coming with me, but I suppose it doesn’t look too good taking time off work only three days after you’ve started.

My flight left Toronto at 1:30pm, which meant getting there for 11:30am, which meant leaving the apartment at 10ish. You can catch public transport all the way to the airport, but it takes an hour. But considering it would cost about $60 and still take 20 minutes to half an hour by cab, taking the subway and bus for $3 is absolutely fine.

You have to go through US Customs before leaving Toronto so that means filling out the Customs card, then going through US Customs and getting the third degree (and panicking that you haven’t filled everything in correctly or your ESTA has disappeared or that you’re going to be hauled away for looking at the officer funny). But all went off without a hitch.

Bit of a delay at security as the people in front of me didn’t think to take off their shoes, or remove their laptops, or take off their belts, or empty their pockets, or take off their jackets until the last second, and then look painfully stupid when the security personnel tell them to take it all off. I cut in front of one of the guys because he wasn’t anywhere near ready. I can understand if this is your first time flying but these people looked like they’d travelled enough to know better.

We boarded on time, flying American Airlines (AA for short. Wonder if that’s to help their pilots stay off the wagon…or is it on the wagon?). The plane was tiny with a seating configuration of 1-2. I’ve been on a smaller plane before (which seated six) when I went on a Numbat release, but there’s still a moment of thinking, “Is this going to stay up in the air?”.

The flight only took a little over an hour, enough time for me to completely stuff up two of the Sudoku puzzles in the inflight magazine. When the pilot announced we were approaching our landing, I looked out the window and thought how we’d been made to feel that flying is routine when barely more than a century ago it was something only a handful of people got to do. How high we can fly now, what sights we can see from above.

I had my very first glimpse of the New York skyline, picking out either the Chrysler building or Empire State, or I could be completely wrong and was looking at something totally different. We landed at JFK to bright blue skies and perfect weather. (It was raining when I left Toronto.)

The airport was huge and I had a three-hour wait before my flight to London. I was very excited about the fact that the flight to London from New York only took about seven hours, so different from the long haul flight from Perth.

I had managed to preselect a row of four seats at the back of the plane. When I got to my seat, there was one other person sitting in the row and I had the suspicion that she had been sitting in the row in front with her son but had moved back, thinking she and her son would have four seats each. I was a bit annoyed as I could have stretched out completely across all four and she was only tiny. However, the flight was nice, the plane looked new and there was enough leg room. I also had two empty seats beside me whereas people further up the plane were more bunched up.

Great service on the flight and the entertainment system was great. I watched Beautiful Creatures (for young adults, based on a book about witches), which didn’t do much to empower young girls if you barely scratched beneath the surface of it all, and then I started watching a Tina Fey film called Admission or Admissions. I stopped about halfway through after eating dinner (I had to have pasta as the chicken had run out by the time the stewardesses got to me) and managed to sleep for about an hour and a half or two hours. I woke to the smell of croissants (or rather the smell of croissants woke up) and then I watched more of the film. I didn’t get to finish it before we landed so looks like I’ll catch that on the way home. It was so nice being on a short flight.

Landed in Heathrow and walked many corridors to get to passport control. I have a British passport with the electronic chip thing in it so I was able to use the automatic machine and there was no one in queue. I was through in about 30 seconds, no waiting. Was fantastic.

Picked up my luggage, caught the 15 minute express train to Heathrow, then the District Line to East Putney and then walked to Jackie’s place. I arrived a little before 8am and knocked on the door.

Then knocked again.

Then shouted through the letterbox.

Then knocked and shouted again.

I sat on the front step for about half an hour before Jackie came to let me in. Her front doorbell is broken and didn’t quite hear me knocking and wasn’t expecting me until 8:30. Donna was sound asleep upstairs as well. Unfortunately I can’t get international roaming on my Rogers SIM without paying for a travel pack (or so it looks), so I couldn’t let anyone know I was there.

Never mind though. I had made it to London.