Day 1: London - prefunc

Remember my crazy adventure to the airport almost two weeks ago? (Sorry, another pipe dream of mine was to blog while I traveled. I have been barely able to keep up with journaling notes to blog about later.) Well, you would think that it would be smooth sailing. You would think so. Turns out, I was in the WRONG terminal. As my flight started to board, I began to run. I ran like my life depended on it. OK, not really, but it felt like it at the time. I ran from one end of the airport (terminal E), through central parking, to the other end (terminal A). I made my flight with about 10 minutes to spare. Whew!

Layout of Boston Logan....note that there is no scale. (Source)

I landed with no issues, well, other than being sleep deprived. My internal clock was all messed up at this point. London is 5 hours ahead of Boston. But I'd been 3 hours behind for the previous two weeks. Excitement keeps you moving, right?

I made it! Instagram @hungc

My flight landed ~30 minutes before J's. I had told him that I'd meet him at his gate. But Heathrow doesn't function like airports in the USA (neither does Paris, Tokyo, or Hong Kong...pretty much none do.) But you can't meet someone at their gate when you fly international. You can meet them at their terminal after they have collected their baggage. It took me awhile to figure this out. I wandered through empty hallways toward the signs for 'connecting flights', almost got on a bus that would take me to the departure gates for J's terminal. Luckily, the security guard and I talked through the logistics and realized that it would be best for me to go through Immigration/Customs myself and then catch the train to the arrivals section of J's terminal. And luckily, J figured out that he should keep moving forward and go through Immigration/Customs and wait at the end. Had none of the above happened, we had no clue how we would get in touch with one another since neither of our cell phones work overseas.

Catching the train from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3 to find J.

Crisis diverted! We found one another and off we went into the heart of London.