New York to London Day 1 2011

Well, the trip got off to an interesting start. Normally we travel on my sister-in-laws airline passes, which means two things. One, we get to fly first class for practically nothing. And two, it's 'space available' which usually means lots of running around the airport from gate to gate (or terminal to terminal in the case of DFW) trying to actually get ON a flight. In an effort to be less of a basket case ('will we make this flight?', 'dammit!! if we miss this last flight we STILL have to pay for the hotel tonight in London!!', etc...) I bought tickets to London. Unfortunately I booked us on Virgin Atlantic, which some of you may know DOES NOT fly out of DFW. So we were planning on using the passes to fly from DFW - JFK (where our flight was scheduled to depart from to Heathrow [LHR] ). The night before we are to depart, we are out having a good bye dinner with friends when my sister-in-law decides to check the flights. Well, the flight they were planning on taking from DFW-LHR was now oversold, which means NO Stand-bys. And our flight from DFW-JFK was a no-go as well. This sent my sister-in-law into a panicked frenzy. They we not yet packed and needed to orchestrate another way to London, post haste. I was feeling pretty good about buying tickets at that point. Especially leaving out of New York. You see, since NY has three airports I knew we could GET to NY. The airline flies every 30mins from DFW to LaGuardia (LGA) with most flights only about half to three quarters full. This would mean taking a cab from LGA over to JFK, but not a crisis. We decided to grab an early flight from DFW to allow enough time for full planes and cab transfers between airports. Fortunately we got on the first flight we tried for and arrived into LGA at 11:30AM. A cheap cab ride later and we were in JFK. Smooth sailing from here on out!

Or so I thought. It seems that Virgin doesn't open its counters, or the automatic kiosks, until two hours before the first flight of the day. Which isn't until 3:00 in the afternoon. Which means we cant get boarding passes or check bags until at least 1:00PM. Oh well some lunch and some relaxing in the JFK food court should fix that. Of course our flight isn't scheduled to depart until 11:00PM. So sitting in the airport for 12 hours with two young children didn't sound like the most fun in the world. Fortunately once the counters opened at 1:00PM I was able to flirt our way into an earlier flight, at no charge of course, and get us out of JFK by 7:00PM. Yeah!!

By taking an earlier flight we lost the kids meals I had reserved for the later flight. But, the kids can deal, right? The other problem with the earlier flight was with the in-flight entertainment. Or I should say, the lack of entertainment. About 5 mins into the flight, the system (which looked to be very cool. Games, 100+ on-demand movies, TV shows etc...) crashed and they couldn't fix it. Fortunately I had loaded my iPad up with a ton of movies for the kids so they didn't mind. I did mind but let it go as a fluke occurrence.

The rest of the flight was fairly standard. The kids hated the food, the plane was too cold, etc. Finally we land at Heathrow and dis-embark the plane. Prior to landing we were told by the flight attendants that we only needed to fill out one customs card per family. FYI, this is NOT the case when entering the UK. It's one per person, including the kids. So we had to scramble to obtain additional cards and fill them in while trying to get into the customs line. Not fun. The only good thing is the delay allowed us to meet up with the sister-in-law and the rest of the crew travelling with her in customs. They finally made it by traveling to Boston from DFW, then on to London. Ahhh, stand-by travel.

After getting 5 adults, 1 tween and 4 children through customs, I lead everyone to the tube stop, help everyone purchase Oyster cards (best way to pay for the tube!) and we were off for our hotel! Unfortunately we arrived during rush hour and the tube was crammed! We had to squeeze 10 people, plus luggage, into an already overcrowded train. Then we had to switch from the Piccadilly line to the District Line, at Hammersmith. Those familiar with London and the Underground probably are feeling my pain right about now. Alas, we finally make it to Tower Hill where our hotel is located. After a few minutes or orienteering I lead us on to the hotel. We drop off our bags (since the rooms aren't ready) and decide to hit the Tower of London, as it's the closest sight. After about 20mins of walking around the Tower massive jet-lag hits us and we end up heading back to the hotel to crash for the night (yes at about 1:00PM, if that!).

[We did venture out to Piccadilly Circus to find dinner, but that was pretty uneventful, if rather tasty.]

So ended day 1 in London. Day 2 to follow.