After three attempts, I finally made it home to merry olde England. Unfortunately, the length of my stay in Albuquerque disrupted several other travel plans. Originally, I was going to fly down to Cape Town, South Africa at the end of my trip the U.S. and do some volunteer work at an orphanage for Christmas. I missed that trip due to my own misscheduling, though, and not due to weather. The winter storms DID disrupt my plans to travel to other European destinations, though, including Germany, the south of France, and Poland. I'll still have my birthday Paris trip in about three weeks, though, so I'm not complaining. It's just nice to be home.
On my transatlantic flight, I noticed a very special passenger and snapped this photo. I knew if he was on the plane that we'd be perfectly safe. It was an interesting Christmas spent entirely at 37,000 feet. I went to sleep on Christmas eve and woke up Christmas morning, all while soaring through the skies. I woke up just as the sun was rising, and I was treated to a spectacular light show of gold and red on the clouds. Shortly after, I spotted land- the snow covered mountains of southern Ireland. It was really breathtaking, and I wish I had something better than a shitty cellphone picture of it:
A short time later, we crossed the Irish Sea and hit the coast of England.
I breezed through customs in record time, but then waited on my luggage for almost 45 minutes. Something about that seemed backwards. Just once in my life, I want to be that guy that's the first person to get his luggage.
The next hurtle to overcome was transportation home since the Tube and all buses were shut down for the holiday. After having two or three gypsy cabs approach me, I finally found a legitimate one, but he didn't take credit cards. Finally, I was saved by a crazy Yugoslavian cabbie who drove his cab mostly on two wheels. We had a great conversation about movies and music though, and he even sang a little bit of Rolling Stones for me in his thick accent. It was almost worth the $100 I had to pay for the short ride.
Funny enough, I had no food in the house except for half a jar of peanut butter, some cheese, and a Coke. With all the stores closed, that was all I had to eat for the entire day. NOT so funny was when I discovered today that the stores were closed for a second day. I found an open pharmacy, where I was able to buy a couple of crappy gas station sandwiches and a couple of drinks. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll fare better. Not exactly a feast fit for the return of a king.
The sunset shot above is from a set of pictures from the Albuquerque trip I put up on my Flickr page, if you'd care to take a look. Happy Holidays everybody!
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