The Trip to England
Since the dollar was at a 26 year low against the British pound,
Kristina and I decided to go to England and spend our money as inefficiently
as possible.
The real reason for the trip was that Kristina's sister Jen is at Cambridge
on a Gates Scholarship.
Her time there is almost over, so we needed to visit before she was gone.
Along on the trip were two of Kristina's college friends, Marie and Jess.
Before we left, a rose we had on our deck started to bloom. I was worried
it would do so while we were away and we'd miss it:
10 July 2007 - Tuesday
Kristina woke up incredibly early and went to work at 5am; I slept
in a bit later. We packed up the car and left Ithaca around
10:30, driving to Jess's house near Ossining. We made pretty good
time, despite a long detour around a road closure right after the
Bear Mountain bridge.
We got to Jess's place, Marie showed up, and we were ready to go. Jess's
extremely nice pastor drove us to JFK airport.
We made it in plenty of time. Actually, we had too much time.
Due to storms on the East coast lots of flights were delayed, including ours.
We had to move all over the terminal as our gate changed 3 times, and in the
end the plane was delayed by 3 hours. We did keep a group of people around
us amused by playing hearts. Our eventual flight had the unlikely designation
of Delta 1.
Once we finally got on the plane and started taxiing, the pilot came on
and said we were 35th in line for takeoff. Eventually we did take off, and
It was nearly 1am before they served us supper. I tried (not very
successfully) to sleep during the flight.
In the morning we looked out the window and saw land! We were flying
over the south of England. It looked sunny and clear but by the time we
landed at Gatwick it was cloudy and foggy (which is definitely more
typical British weather).
We got through customs very efficiently, obtained some local currency,
and headed for the trains. We lucked out, there was a promotion going
on this summer that 3 or 4 could ride for the price of two, so essentially
all of our train rides were half price. We caught the train to
Kings Cross Thameslink in London (we'll be back here in a few days)
and ran across the street to catch an express train to Cambridge.
Here is a blurry picture from inside our train in Kings Cross station
(of Harry Potter fame):
On to Day 1 in Cambridge
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