We arrived safe and mostly sound.
The plane ride was uneventful. It was the first time, I think, that I've been on a flight where the lead pilot was a woman. I was really surprised by the number of Middle East folk who were on the flight. Everybody was apparently going back to Beirut after this. I guess this is not unusual for Virgin -- the little screen on the back of the seat not only told you where the plane was over the Atlantic, but what direction to turn to for Mecca at any given moment. I did not, however, see anybody with a prayer mat in the aisles however.
We landed in Terminal 3 at Heathrow. It was a dump when I was last here, and it's still a dump. We spent about 45 minutes in the line for Immigration. The line for UK/EU nationals was even worse. John's stomach was deeply troubled - evidently taking an Ambien to help you sleep and eating every last thing the airline gives you is not a good combination - and he had vomited in the bathroom before we had left the plane. I was pretty certain that they were going to spot him as having Swine Flu and send us off to some Ellis Island type quarantine, but when we finally hit the immigration officer he was so busy stamping things that he never even looked up.
We picked up the car at Hertz. We are not really going to need a car all that much, but British Rail is not only so awful but so expensive that a 4 day pass cost more for the two of us than renting a car for three weeks. Driving into Brentford - Google Maps really does fantastic directions, so much better than Mapquest - John really started to get sick. Two times while we were stopped at a red light on the A4 he opened the car door and vomited. I wondered what folks in the car behind us were thinking, but Vicki says that binge drinking is so prevalent in England that people are puking all the time. After a couple hours more the tummy was quiet and he ate his dinner with the usual voracity.
