I went to Greece about two years ago, so going into this experience I knew the flight would be one of my worst enemies. I have a hard time getting comfortable in those seats, the guy in front of me ALWAYS reclines to give me less room, and without fail there will always be at least one screaming child. Add the fact that I can't really sleep anywhere other than a bed/couch, and you've got yourself a nice little helping of misery.
Before I left my family and I met Malorie (my friend with whom I traveled) and her dad at Denny's, so that was pretty nice. I had a milkshake and the appetizer sampler (quesadillas, chicken strips, and mozzarella sticks) as my last American food.
As we arrived, I felt that saying goodbye was a lot easier than expected. The fact that I was going to be across the Atlantic for three months hadn't set in yet, so I wasn't sad or anything. I was, quite honestly, really excited to get the heck out of Illinois. I would obviously miss my friends and family, but on the other hand I was excited to do something I have never done.
We went through security very quickly, so we just played the waiting game in the airport. It felt like an eternity before it was time to fly. Once it was close to boarding time, the clerks or whatever you'd call them announced that our flight would be delayed because maintenance was still on the plane. Great. Finally, after maybe 45 minutes or so, we boarded.
It turned out we had great seats. It was the row where the number of seats in the middle switched from 5 to 4, so we, for some reason, had a ridiculous amount of leg room. As the plane took off, I noticed two children in the row in front of me, and as we reached altitude, the guy in front of me predictably reclined as far as his seat could go. Okay, that sucked, but Monster's University was one of the movies available.
This paragraph is dedicated to how AMAZING that movie is. The plot line might seem almost forced, but holy crap is it funny. Mike's roommate is a nerdy Randall with glasses, and Mike suggests Randall take off his glasses as he would be more scary. Immediately upon removing his glasses, Randall starts to squint and snarl a bit because he cannot see, showing how he got his evil look basically. So good.
K so I watched Monster's U, then eventually decided I would try to sleep. I looked for the tylenol PM I packed, and couldn't find the bottle (funny story, I put them in a little pocket that I didn't think about checking until I was in Dublin). So I didn't sleep at all, and decided to watch another movie. Pro tip: lock the door when you use the airplane bathroom.
We ended up landing and I had slept maybe 20 minutes. We got off the plane and saw a guy with a sign that said Michael Rooker, and I kinda regret not waiting a bit to see if it was THE Michael Rooker.
We planned on going to Dublin, but first we had to drop off our luggage at one of Amy's family friend's house (Amy is my girlfriend, duh). Malorie and I each had two checked bags and a backpack each, and I had another bag as well, so we had a crazy amount of stuff to carry. We took the blue line to the green line, then switched stations to take another train to their stop, then walked about five to ten minutes to the Yamamoto's house. As you can imagine, I was dead tired running on what was now 24 hours without sleep. Mrs. Yamamoto was so hospitable, and made us food and let us relax there until we needed to leave for the other airport. So, naturally, we napped for about 30 minutes on her couches.
We then had to backtrack to get to another station to take a train to Stansted airport. That trip was so much easier to make with just backpacks. We got to Stansted about an hour and a half before our flight, so after security we had an hour to kill before our gate opened up. Neither of us were really hungry, but we decided to eat because we hadn't much all day (days?). When we headed to our gate, we saw two policemen with assault rifles. ASSAULT RIFLES. Just carrying them out there like "come at me bro." That was really weird.
More to come in my next post. Stay tuned ;)
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