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windlionSo, yes, I'm back. This means it's time for travel logs! ^^
(I know Flidget already posted the highlights, but if I don't write this all down, I'm going to forget. And this is the sort of thing I don't ever want to forget.)
The trip officially began for me on Friday. Like any good procrastinator, the morning was spent in a frenzy of baking (ladyfingers and pepper-spice cookies), before I belatedly realized I really ought to be getting ready to leave. My mother was most annoyed, but I managed to have myself presentable and everything packed in the car roughly twenty minutes before the airport shuttle was scheduled to leave- exactly the time it takes for us to get there. With my usual scapegrace luck, we arrived precisely on the right minute to find the little bus in the process of being loaded. I bailed out of the car quickly, checked in, and after a hug from my mother, I found myself a seat in the back of the bus. Being practically alight with energy, the several hour trip passed fairly quickly for me, if impatiently. We made a detour to White Plains for another passenger, then made haste to La Guardia to deposit her at the appropriate terminal before continuing on to our destination. I reached JFK at about six o'clock, and passed through to the gate without incident. Evidently I don't trigger much suspicion. XD If I ever did decide to smuggle anything, they'd be in trouble, I tell you.The only problem with /not/ having any problems is, of course, that I ended up with far too much time on my hands. I was at the gate with four hours and some to spare. I am distressingly easy to keep occupied, however, so two hours were wiled away scribbling merrily and checking in to inform the parents that why yes, I had escaped being frisked and found the right terminal. Things got a little weird twist after that, though: an airport worker with a heavy accent wheeled in an elderly lady, and asked if there was anyone waiting at the gate for the flight to London. No one else seemed inclined to speak up, so I waved. Before I knew what was happening, I was promptly gifted with the job of keeping watch on her, and fetching anything she could need. The elderly portuguese woman, Miriam, was very nice, but also heavily accented, and a bit hard to understand. She told me that she'd been wheeled in because she felt ill with a stomachache, but there wasn't anything I could get her. I made some small talk with her, then settled for guard duty with my book while she napped. I only called myself back to duty about ten, twenty minutes before we were scheduled to start boarding and asked if she needed help getting on the plane. She answered yes, so I went to flag down an attendant at a desk and explained the situation to her. The young woman followed me back and started asking Miriam what was wrong- only then did I realize the problem was a lot worse than I thought. >_< Evidently she had a serious condition, but she only wanted to get on the plane and get to her daughter, get it over with. The airport attendant tried to convince her she could stay, be examined by paramedics, then wait until she was well to fly, but Miriam was quite adamant she wanted to go. She told us she was ready to go meet her husband in the afterlife. . . . It's really hard to know how to react to that, especially as the debate was still going when they called everyone to start boarding. I waited as long as I could, then wished her well before I ran in to find my seat. I still don't know if she flew, or made it through. I hope she was all right- she was a strong-willed and sweet personality.
The drama of the airport was left behind, traded for the sheer oppression of a long flight. Six hours isn't a light ride by any means. My seatmate turned out to be a middle-aged German man who wasn't much of a conversationalist, or much of an english speaker for that matter, but seemed nice enough. I'm thankful the people behind us stopped talking after take off, as it was quite obviously an obnoxious twenty-something grad trying to pick up a pretty vegan girl. For all it's a longstanding joke, dinner was quite decent. Breakfast three hours later was also good- even after little, uneasy sleep on uncomfortable airline seats. I've had the unfortunate realization that airline food actually beats out cafeteria food. After all, they're trying to keep you alive and placidly content until they can safely dispose of you elsewhere. Clearly colleges don't care quite as much about our general well-being. . . . or we're just not paying them enough. The flight was uneventful, over all, with the only jostling coming when we crossed over the ocean between Ireland and England. I'm lucky it held off until then, since it made me remember that I don't usually have such an easy time of it travelling. My motionsickness is quite tame, but uncomfortable all the same when it decides to act up. I was quite happy when London came into view below- seas of surburbia, the stadium under construction, then Heathrow. My flight actually landed fourty minutes early, but we made up for it by sitting and waiting almost as long for a gate to open up so we could unload. The wait was actually a fortunate stroke for me; I was rather groggy and nauseas when we landed, but it gave me a chance to catnap. I wandered off the plane much more awake and cheerful than I had been when we landed.Wakefulness /is/ conducive to passing through customs- and so is a bulletproof aura of innocence. I was somewhat startled to find myself walking through unchallenged into England, and blinking at the sea of expectant faces in front of me. Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, nearly half an hour earlier than Flidge was expecting me, I ended up hunkering down to wait. Just about when I was starting to get worried she was missing me, she turned up and spotted me before I recognized her. ^_^ Admittedly, she had a bit of an easier job: the lion's mane can be hard to miss. If she has neglected to mention, she is adorable. Also, difficult to get pictures of. (Woman, how can I prove to my family and friends you aren't an eighty year old lech of a man if you fail to turn up on film? . . . Unless we claim you are a classical vampire and all the pictures are really of you. Except, you know, that might not go over better. . . )It was a beautiful day in London, if a bit toasty, and I was more than happy to be there. Flidge is an experienced dragger of disoriented friends- I found myself ensconced on the top of a double decker bus with a water bottle, my luggage being guarded for me, before I knew what was happening. The trip to her flat consisted mostly of us having an impromtpu lesson in the phoentics of made-up names. I have succeeded in explaining "Poriase" is "Pour-ee-ah-see", but I think she might have won on "Sadrine" being "Sah-dryne" instead of "Say-dreen." Sneaky of her, to win through subversion. Once we arrived at her flat, she took advantage of my disorientation to inflict Devdas on me. I was horribly entertained by the intense swirling action Bollywood so adores- and the gratuitous drapery love. My, do they love their draperies.The very good thing about travelling with a native guide is that they know where all the good things are- for the first day, that meant udon. Roast duck udon is quite good, even if I had no idea how to make slippery noodles bend to the will of my inexperienced chopsticks. Flidge promised to school me in this art before I left, and lo, she always makes good on her promises.
After udon came the trip up the hill, to visit the Church and its graveyards. The scenery up there is beautiful, and duly creepy in red light from the sun. Appropriately, we found a crow feather in the graveyards, which resulted in a trend that is going to haunt us both. XD That night, we settled in to watch Equilibrium, for the sake of pretty, pretty fight scenes, and . . . I think it was something along the lines of Dracula/Vampires 2001, for the sake of MSTing and pissed off figments. As a result, "Behold the wrath of neon Jesus!" has become a recognizable inside joke.
(Pause, breathe, continue. This may well take more than one post- for I am Wind, the longwinded!)
Sunday we set aside for our jaunt to Camden Town Market. Seeing as I was on a budget, and shopping far more for my internal Goth-y characters than myself, it turned out to be more a window-shopping trip than anything else. My inner Goth is quite picky, and the few things that I was actually interested in had some prohibitive elements. (Ie, price. You're entirely right about English poser-goths needing financial backing, Flidge. -_-; $300 dresses, $200 boots, $60 collars, etc. . . . that's one pricey outfit.) The other things I could have gone for, like hairdye or henna, would have likely made my parents flip. . . . Best to save those for when I'm at college and not planning on going home for the weekend for awhile.
It wasn't unproductive, though. I've got a better grip on what my figments would and wouldn't do, now. Also, any shopping trip followed by spicy Portuguese chicken with rice is hardly a bad thing. (Yes, I'm going to ennumerate our meals. I want to remember where to go when I visit again. XD)After lunch, we headed over to stroll through Regent's Park. . . and the fascination with feathers continued. It turns out that the geese in the park deposit a hell of a lot of feathers wherever they go- which is, roughly speaking, /everywhere/. Once we picked up the first one, we were doomed. I now have a considerable collection of goose, duck, and heron feathers and primaries awaiting some art project or another in my garage. When we weren't staring at our feet, or evading the well-trained attack geese, the park was rather pretty and relaxing.
When we finally returned back to the flat, the evening was spent in art and gaming- Flidge decided to tackle her new game while I watched and commentated. Breathe of Fire: Dragon Quarter looks like. . . well, a monumental pain, first off, but interesting when you finally pull all of its goodies away from it. She'll be working on that one for awhile, I wager. Arting, I have realized, is a lot more fun when you can throw it at people immediately and work back and forth. Not that my art was anything more than "Can you do something like that?," but still. . . it's fun to watch Flidge work. ^^
. . . Yep, this is going to take more than one day. I'll continue tomorrow when I've slept. ^^
Coming soon to an lj near you, Monday! Murderholes, ravens, and sparkilies abound at the Tower. And Tuesday, wherein Wind goes wandering places she shouldn't! ("Where are you /now/?" "Uhm. Uhm, give me a minute, I'll get back to you." ". . . You're in France, aren't you?" "Not yet!")
(I know Flidget already posted the highlights, but if I don't write this all down, I'm going to forget. And this is the sort of thing I don't ever want to forget.)
The trip officially began for me on Friday. Like any good procrastinator, the morning was spent in a frenzy of baking (ladyfingers and pepper-spice cookies), before I belatedly realized I really ought to be getting ready to leave. My mother was most annoyed, but I managed to have myself presentable and everything packed in the car roughly twenty minutes before the airport shuttle was scheduled to leave- exactly the time it takes for us to get there. With my usual scapegrace luck, we arrived precisely on the right minute to find the little bus in the process of being loaded. I bailed out of the car quickly, checked in, and after a hug from my mother, I found myself a seat in the back of the bus. Being practically alight with energy, the several hour trip passed fairly quickly for me, if impatiently. We made a detour to White Plains for another passenger, then made haste to La Guardia to deposit her at the appropriate terminal before continuing on to our destination. I reached JFK at about six o'clock, and passed through to the gate without incident. Evidently I don't trigger much suspicion. XD If I ever did decide to smuggle anything, they'd be in trouble, I tell you.The only problem with /not/ having any problems is, of course, that I ended up with far too much time on my hands. I was at the gate with four hours and some to spare. I am distressingly easy to keep occupied, however, so two hours were wiled away scribbling merrily and checking in to inform the parents that why yes, I had escaped being frisked and found the right terminal. Things got a little weird twist after that, though: an airport worker with a heavy accent wheeled in an elderly lady, and asked if there was anyone waiting at the gate for the flight to London. No one else seemed inclined to speak up, so I waved. Before I knew what was happening, I was promptly gifted with the job of keeping watch on her, and fetching anything she could need. The elderly portuguese woman, Miriam, was very nice, but also heavily accented, and a bit hard to understand. She told me that she'd been wheeled in because she felt ill with a stomachache, but there wasn't anything I could get her. I made some small talk with her, then settled for guard duty with my book while she napped. I only called myself back to duty about ten, twenty minutes before we were scheduled to start boarding and asked if she needed help getting on the plane. She answered yes, so I went to flag down an attendant at a desk and explained the situation to her. The young woman followed me back and started asking Miriam what was wrong- only then did I realize the problem was a lot worse than I thought. >_< Evidently she had a serious condition, but she only wanted to get on the plane and get to her daughter, get it over with. The airport attendant tried to convince her she could stay, be examined by paramedics, then wait until she was well to fly, but Miriam was quite adamant she wanted to go. She told us she was ready to go meet her husband in the afterlife. . . . It's really hard to know how to react to that, especially as the debate was still going when they called everyone to start boarding. I waited as long as I could, then wished her well before I ran in to find my seat. I still don't know if she flew, or made it through. I hope she was all right- she was a strong-willed and sweet personality.
The drama of the airport was left behind, traded for the sheer oppression of a long flight. Six hours isn't a light ride by any means. My seatmate turned out to be a middle-aged German man who wasn't much of a conversationalist, or much of an english speaker for that matter, but seemed nice enough. I'm thankful the people behind us stopped talking after take off, as it was quite obviously an obnoxious twenty-something grad trying to pick up a pretty vegan girl. For all it's a longstanding joke, dinner was quite decent. Breakfast three hours later was also good- even after little, uneasy sleep on uncomfortable airline seats. I've had the unfortunate realization that airline food actually beats out cafeteria food. After all, they're trying to keep you alive and placidly content until they can safely dispose of you elsewhere. Clearly colleges don't care quite as much about our general well-being. . . . or we're just not paying them enough. The flight was uneventful, over all, with the only jostling coming when we crossed over the ocean between Ireland and England. I'm lucky it held off until then, since it made me remember that I don't usually have such an easy time of it travelling. My motionsickness is quite tame, but uncomfortable all the same when it decides to act up. I was quite happy when London came into view below- seas of surburbia, the stadium under construction, then Heathrow. My flight actually landed fourty minutes early, but we made up for it by sitting and waiting almost as long for a gate to open up so we could unload. The wait was actually a fortunate stroke for me; I was rather groggy and nauseas when we landed, but it gave me a chance to catnap. I wandered off the plane much more awake and cheerful than I had been when we landed.Wakefulness /is/ conducive to passing through customs- and so is a bulletproof aura of innocence. I was somewhat startled to find myself walking through unchallenged into England, and blinking at the sea of expectant faces in front of me. Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, nearly half an hour earlier than Flidge was expecting me, I ended up hunkering down to wait. Just about when I was starting to get worried she was missing me, she turned up and spotted me before I recognized her. ^_^ Admittedly, she had a bit of an easier job: the lion's mane can be hard to miss. If she has neglected to mention, she is adorable. Also, difficult to get pictures of. (Woman, how can I prove to my family and friends you aren't an eighty year old lech of a man if you fail to turn up on film? . . . Unless we claim you are a classical vampire and all the pictures are really of you. Except, you know, that might not go over better. . . )It was a beautiful day in London, if a bit toasty, and I was more than happy to be there. Flidge is an experienced dragger of disoriented friends- I found myself ensconced on the top of a double decker bus with a water bottle, my luggage being guarded for me, before I knew what was happening. The trip to her flat consisted mostly of us having an impromtpu lesson in the phoentics of made-up names. I have succeeded in explaining "Poriase" is "Pour-ee-ah-see", but I think she might have won on "Sadrine" being "Sah-dryne" instead of "Say-dreen." Sneaky of her, to win through subversion. Once we arrived at her flat, she took advantage of my disorientation to inflict Devdas on me. I was horribly entertained by the intense swirling action Bollywood so adores- and the gratuitous drapery love. My, do they love their draperies.The very good thing about travelling with a native guide is that they know where all the good things are- for the first day, that meant udon. Roast duck udon is quite good, even if I had no idea how to make slippery noodles bend to the will of my inexperienced chopsticks. Flidge promised to school me in this art before I left, and lo, she always makes good on her promises.
After udon came the trip up the hill, to visit the Church and its graveyards. The scenery up there is beautiful, and duly creepy in red light from the sun. Appropriately, we found a crow feather in the graveyards, which resulted in a trend that is going to haunt us both. XD That night, we settled in to watch Equilibrium, for the sake of pretty, pretty fight scenes, and . . . I think it was something along the lines of Dracula/Vampires 2001, for the sake of MSTing and pissed off figments. As a result, "Behold the wrath of neon Jesus!" has become a recognizable inside joke.
(Pause, breathe, continue. This may well take more than one post- for I am Wind, the longwinded!)
Sunday we set aside for our jaunt to Camden Town Market. Seeing as I was on a budget, and shopping far more for my internal Goth-y characters than myself, it turned out to be more a window-shopping trip than anything else. My inner Goth is quite picky, and the few things that I was actually interested in had some prohibitive elements. (Ie, price. You're entirely right about English poser-goths needing financial backing, Flidge. -_-; $300 dresses, $200 boots, $60 collars, etc. . . . that's one pricey outfit.) The other things I could have gone for, like hairdye or henna, would have likely made my parents flip. . . . Best to save those for when I'm at college and not planning on going home for the weekend for awhile.
It wasn't unproductive, though. I've got a better grip on what my figments would and wouldn't do, now. Also, any shopping trip followed by spicy Portuguese chicken with rice is hardly a bad thing. (Yes, I'm going to ennumerate our meals. I want to remember where to go when I visit again. XD)After lunch, we headed over to stroll through Regent's Park. . . and the fascination with feathers continued. It turns out that the geese in the park deposit a hell of a lot of feathers wherever they go- which is, roughly speaking, /everywhere/. Once we picked up the first one, we were doomed. I now have a considerable collection of goose, duck, and heron feathers and primaries awaiting some art project or another in my garage. When we weren't staring at our feet, or evading the well-trained attack geese, the park was rather pretty and relaxing.
When we finally returned back to the flat, the evening was spent in art and gaming- Flidge decided to tackle her new game while I watched and commentated. Breathe of Fire: Dragon Quarter looks like. . . well, a monumental pain, first off, but interesting when you finally pull all of its goodies away from it. She'll be working on that one for awhile, I wager. Arting, I have realized, is a lot more fun when you can throw it at people immediately and work back and forth. Not that my art was anything more than "Can you do something like that?," but still. . . it's fun to watch Flidge work. ^^
. . . Yep, this is going to take more than one day. I'll continue tomorrow when I've slept. ^^
Coming soon to an lj near you, Monday! Murderholes, ravens, and sparkilies abound at the Tower. And Tuesday, wherein Wind goes wandering places she shouldn't! ("Where are you /now/?" "Uhm. Uhm, give me a minute, I'll get back to you." ". . . You're in France, aren't you?" "Not yet!")
