There were some advantages of getting the 0755 flight from Heathrow. For one, it meant that my flight got in at around 11am, I was through customs and immigration by 1130, which was brilliant. It meant I had the afternoon and evening in Virginia. On the downside, however, it meant a 3am start for me, mum and dad to drive to Heathrow to get me to check in for 5am! So all in all a long day.
Having checked in online, all I had to do was drop my bags off... apparently with United, unless you're a rich kid who can afford to fly business or first class, you can now only take 1 item of checked baggage onto the plane, not good when you're spending a month away and have loads of stuff really!! So we had to pay an extra £28 for the privilege of taking my second suitcase!!! But anyways, In the end, I had two items of baggage in the hold.
The flight was fairly uneventful, apart from some turbulence somewhere over Canada, the Atlantic, and coming into land at Dulles Int'l (that basically eliminates everywhere it could not have been bumpy really!!!) it was a fairly smooth flight, really cloudy in parts, but in some places there were some really gorgeous views...
The first pic, was taken over Canada, at around 36000 ft, whilst the other one was taken just as we were about to land, at around 3000 ft. All in all the flight was pretty good, only downside was the choice of films on offer, which were in all fairness, crap!!! I watched one, "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus" which was OK, but the rest just didn't do it for me, so i watched a bit of outnumbered on my laptop instead!!! One of the highlights of the flight, were the two veggies sat either side of me, who had forgotten to order veggie meals, so they gave me all their meat!!! So instead of getting 1 slice of bacon with breakfast, I had bacon and 2 sausages, and then 3 ham and cheese rolls as a snack!! Result!!!
It didn't take that long to get through the formalities once we'd landed, in fact, it took such a short time that by the time that I had to wait for Auntie Lizzie, James and Hannah to arrive to pick me up!! En Route back to their house, we stopped off at Wegmans (a massive supermarket type place) to get some lunch and a few bits and pieces before heading off to their house to eat.
I have to say, houses in America, are about 15million times the size of those in the UK, Auntie Lizzie's is no exception!!! I reckon the basement alone is the size of my house back home!! I'll put some pictures up soon of it.
After lunch we went shopping, first of all to target (one of those "we sell everything" stores, that literally does sell everything) and then off to the mall. We got a few bits and pieces, including a mobile for me and a new camera lens, which apparently should've cost around $500 but was incorrectly marked up at $200!!! bargain!!! and then headed off back home around 1630 local time, in time to cook the most gorgeous dinner of spare ribs and salad... ribs from the UK have absolutely nothing on American ribs... apparently the trick is to boil the ribs first, so that they're nice and tender so it doesn't get used as dental floss when you eat it!!!
By this point i was majorly flagging, having been up for around 22 or so hours... so after watching a DVD called "the tooth fairy", which sounds really odd... but was actually a really good film, I headed off to bed with a cup of tea.
I'm not sure what the plan for today is, I think we're going to see if we can get an England shirt, and some stuff, before picking Hannah up from school and stuff... all will be revealed in the next post... but until then, stay safe guys!!!
x
The mall from the air, about 3 minutes before we landed! I was well impressed I spotted this!!!
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