So on June 13th, I took the LRT and met my Dad for the drive home to my parents' place. I spent an excellent night there, going over with my mom on what to pack/not pack… and relax somewhat. Some people may have noticed that I was online that day and even part of the next day even though I had told them that I probably wouldn't be.
I showed my mom some of the Vegas trip pictures, plus a load of older ones (all posted on Facebook if anyone was interested). Dad also saw some of the older ones. It was relatively relaxing, and I did get a good night's sleep, although I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep again.
The flight was scheduled for around 8pm that night. A Red Eye. So we made it to the airport 3hrs or so ahead of our flight (as requested) and wandered around the airport for quite some time. It had been a while since I'd taken a flight out of Edmonton that didn't go directly to the USA, so I marvelled a bit over the selection of shops and whatnot available outside of the USA only area!
The flight itself was long, but pretty good. We were fed two meals (supper and breakfast) plus several beverage services and a snack. I didn't sleep terribly much, but watched the movie A Painted Veil, which was rather good, although it did take a while to get into. I'm imagining what was cut from the film to make it airplane ready. The other film, I didn't watch for the millionth time. I really should catch The Bourne Identity sometime… I've seen snippets in airplanes often enough now!
Anywho… we eventually got near London and hit turbulence. This doesn't usually bother me much, but mom gets motion sick easily so that wasn't terribly great for either of us (yes I didn't find it terribly pleasant either this time). We had to wait on the tarmac for what seemed like forever though before getting off the plane. When we finally got into Heathrow Airport and through the passport stamping part, and got our luggage we joined a huge line up bottlenecking the 'NOTHING TO DECLARE' area. Normally this would be the fast track out of this part of the airport but not this time. Instead, we were waiting for the employees to return to their posts following a FIRE ALARM. Yes. That was it. So everything was delayed but we eventually got out of there and found the correct desk at the airport for our transfer to the hotel.
And since I labeled this Day 1, I think I'll end here after the flight stuff and start the actual fun stuff summary later on… keeping details semi-palatable for people.