Melrose Place B&B

It felt so odd to leave on Monday and land on Tuesday. Once I made it through immigrations, customs was a piece of cake. Obviously, I had nothing to declare so I wizzed right through. My friend, Boudicca was waiting for me and I think getting a bit worried since she saw the flight arrived 1/2 hour early. It was great seeing Boo after chatting with her & running Dee and our stores for at least a year. Without her to show me where to go I am sure I would have been lost forever as London is a series of trains and busses. Definitely a hustle & bustle with everyone knowing where they are going & how to get there.

The B&B is lovely and huge. My room is separate from the main house and a bit secluded. The locks are different than what I am use too. There are French doors that open into the garden area and it is very tranquil and peaceful. You can hear the water bubbling.

Yikes! Immigrations can be brutal

I am a little late posting to the blog. My only excuse that in 3 days i have walked more in 3 days then I think I have in an entire year.

As briefly as i can i will try to summarize my very long travel day. Flew out of Roanoke and i have to say I love Roanoke Airport. It is a tiny airport and they have had to cut a lot of their flights, but the internet is FREE. So while I waited for my flight, I was lucky enough to find a chair with an outlet nearby and play World of Warcraft. Took no time at all to get to Dulles, maybe 40 minutes.

Now Dulles, is definitely a waking nightmare. For the number of people who travel through Dulles it seems a bit small to me. Also all the terminals are separate from one another so when I landed at terminal A, I had to go to terminal C for my flight to heathrow. Now, the shuttles are great and I got right on with no wait whatsoever. Finding my gate was not quite as easy though. I quickly discovered that when your flight is 6 hours out yet, it does not show on the departure board. No problem, I found the man who had the "info booth." Only problem is he had no info to give me and pointed me to an United official at one of the gates and told me to go right. Now, where the shuttle landed, it was probably around gate 15 and going right took me to around gate 22 before I found a United person who was not busy. He was none to pleased though as he had to get out a book and look the flight up. Ok, remember, I am at gate 22. See if you can guess what gate I needed! Gate.... (ready?).... ONE!

Sigh! Remember that laptop I had. If you have ever been to Dulles, it is quite a walk from gate 22 to gate 1 especially when you are carrying the laptop you just had to bring. Now mind you, I am not sorry in the least I brought the laptop, but i do not enjoy lugging it around. It is definitely a pain. Pain in my shoulder that is.

Ok, I get to my gate only to discover that if I want to use the internet it is going to cost 5.95 for 2 hours. First off, I was not lucky enough to have an outlet next to me and I had doubts of my battery lasting 2 hours so i passed. It seems sort of sad that Roanoke, a small airport offers the Internet for free and a huge international airport with millions of travels, has to charge.

My United flight was wonderful. It left on time, I got to watch the new Sex & The City movie. The meals had a bit to be desired, but that is just typical of any airline food I think. After the movies were over, people settled down to sleep... All i think but me! No matter what position I tried to put my body in, sleep aluded me. However, the flight was at least 35 minutes early.

Immigrations took at least 1 hour and possibly closer to 1-1/2 hours. I really did not think this would be an issue at all. I expected the "How long are you staying? I did not expect, "Why did your husband not travel with you.? When is the last time you saw your friend? How can you prove to me that you are going home? Yikes! Modern technology is so nice. You can book your ticket online without the use of a travel agent and you can even print your own boarding pass within 24 hours of your flight. What you get is an E-Ticket which is not a ticket you hold in your hand. I was really worried on this one, and then thankfully I remembered I had a print out of the reservation. I shudder to think what might have happened to me if I had not had that.

Ok, later I will tell you about the B&B . Mind you at the end of this post, it is now Tuesday.

TGIF Friday!

You got to love Fridays, even if you are like me and have to work on Saturday, I still love Fridays, which reminds me of one of my favorite restaurants, TGIF that we eat at when we go to Roanoke. Ok, completely off topic here, but I tend to ramble.

Trip is now 3 days away not counting today. Excitement level is huge at this point. Only, I screwed up royally! Originally Mark (hubby) was going to drive me to Dulles, which is nearly 3 hours one way but since my flight leaves so late in the night, nearly 10 p.m., we decided to book me a flight out of Roanoke, which is only an hour away. The flight out of Roanoke leaves at 2:36 and arrives at Dulles just about an hour later; maybe a little more. No problem waiting around the airport until my later flight leaves. I love to people watch and can always browse the shops, but don't you just hate the prices in airports! Well, I got to studying the return flight from Dulles to Roanoke. Arrives at Dulles at 2:18. When does the flight to Roanoke leave you ask? Well even if you didn't ask, I'll tell you anyways... 12:29. See how I screwed up royally? Now, I am sure I can change either flight to fix this small screw up, but for a hefty fee of 100.00; so I guess Mark has decided to drive to Dulles to pick me up. Nice of him, no? Originally, when we were checking on flights from Roanoke to Dulles we were going to go with a one way ticket, but the one way ticket was like 5 times the price of a round trip. Go figure!!

Really not too much to do at this point other than put all my clothes in the suitcase which I might do tonight or tomorrow and gather all the miscellaneous stuff I want to take. I.e., laptop, reading supplies, books, cell phone cord, and many many miscellous stuff. More later on the off chance anyone is reading this.

Six --- that is 6 days!

Mark dragged up the big black suitcase yesterday so I will be taking that & a slightly smaller green one. Dryer sheets are wonderful for airing them out. I am suppose to be working today, but alas the holiday has slowed down work coming in so I have lots of time in between jobs. (I am a medical transcriptionist that works from home for a national transcription company.) I have been making good use of this time by taking out clothes I want to take with me and putting them on the bed. I even ironed a few things that are wrinkled. Now, I have you know, I NEVER EVER iron, however, but I think we always want to make the best possible impressions we can, and I would hate for people to think I look disheveled.

This business of running out work really sucks too, as I must have 35 hours a week and any time I miss I will have to make up Sunday, my day off and day before I leave. Bummer! On the bright side, I will be off work for 10 days.

There really is not much more I can do, short of pack, sort, and gather everything I am taking with me. The passport is in order. I even bought an electrical converting thingie so I can use their currency. Yes, that is right, must have connections to the web while I am on vacation.

I will try to post to this blog daily and maybe a few pictures as well. More later. Wonders if anyone is bothering to read this. :D

Less than 2 weeks to go

Getting really excited. Have been shopping for all the miscellanous stuff I need. Travel size stuff, etc. Not too much preparation that I need. I am getting excited, but definitely not looking forward to all the travel time. It is amazing the stuff I have to buy. For example, I am guessing I am going to need an umbrella. I have an umbrella, but it has a pointed end on it, and I do not think I even want to attempt to bring that through the airport.

I had plans of keeping my carry ons down to 1 (laptop naturally) with my purse, but I have figured out it just isn't going to happen. I am going to have to pack the purse and use a small tote bag instead. Least, I hope I can keep it down to the small tote. I figure I should not have it too bad, as most of my time in the airports will be spent waiting.

I checked weather.com yesterday, and it looks like the weather will probably be high 60s with lows in the 50s. Not too bad. More later on this most anticipating trip. :D

Four weeks out!

This trip has been planned for approximately 9 months. I am sure I have tried the patience of my good friends in Second Life (http://secondlife.com) as well as my family with my talk about this trip.

For anyone who might not know, I am known as Patti Peregrine in a virtual world called Second Life. Well, on September 9th my virtual world & real world will meet. Definition = meeting real friends from second life. Boudicca Amat from London & Jos Yohkoh from Holland. Jos is coming to London also, however, much shorter trip then I have.

Now the trip is 4 weeks out and everyone knows how fast 4 weeks can go by. I have my passport safely stowed in my desk drawer, have been shopping (always a treat) for some new clothes to take with me. I have purchased an extra 2 gb memory card for my digital camera, a small flash drive, exra batteries for the laptop, struggled for weeks to find the perfect laptop bag for my 17 inch laptop (not an easy task let me tell you), purchased a plug converter to use said laptop in UK.

I am starting this blog as a means of journalling this experience. Sure hope London is ready for me!