Back in the States
Trip Start
May 25, 2009
1
32
Trip End
Jul 07, 2009
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Thursday, July 9, 2009
I arrived back in the States late Tuesday night and have spent the past few days trying to adjust. All in all, I think I'm doing well with the time difference. I'm wide awake in the morning, but then crash at night. I'm sure it will even out shortly. I'm spending the next few days with my parents and then heading back to Pittsburgh (and the mountains of books I have to read) on Monday.
Vicki and I had kind of a crazy last two days. We left Paris at 9:30pm on Monday night and traveled by train to London. Yes, by train. We went through the "Chunnel" or the tunnel that connects England and France via the English Channel. It was neat and much shorter than I thought it would be - maybe 2 or 2.5 hours. We checked into a hotel in London around 11:00 (England is an hour behind France), and crashed. The next day we got up, did a little shopping, and then met Kyle (my former flatmate) for lunch. Fortunately, our hotel held onto our luggage for us so we didn't have to carry it with us. Kyle plans to travel to many of the places we visited, so he had lots of travel questions for us. It's fun to be knowledgable, especially when we feel clueless in most places! After lunch, we took the underground back to our hotel, picked up our luggage, and headed to Heathrow.
We planned our timing perfectly and only had to wait about 30 mins for our flight - or so we thought. Once on board, our captain came over the loudspeaker and told us there would be a "slight" delay due to earlier rain showers. By "slight," we thought he meant 20 mins. Nope! He told us the delay would be an hour, but not to worry because the flight attendants would be coming around with drinks. Drinks on British Airways includes free wine, so we were cool with that. They also turned on the in-flight entertainment, which should have been a sign that we weren't going anywhere for a while. While on delay, we received even more rain, so we didn't take off for almost two hours. An 8 hour flight on to of an additional 2 hours on the runway makes for too much time on a plane!
We somehow made up time because we were only an hour and fifteen mintues late in landing, but by the time we met up with my parents, it was close to 10pm. Then, due to construction on the Beltway, we got caught in traffic (yes, at 11pm). We made it home about 1am, but I wasn't really tired because my body thought it was 7am. I eventually fell asleep though and then woke up at 7am - wide-eyed and ready to go! Ah, time differences. How I love them! And, creature of habit that I am, my body does not enjoy transition. So, I'm trying to get into some sort of routine as quickly as possible.
So, I suppose this will be my last blog entry. Not that I don't have more fun things to write about, but Pittsburgh is not nearly as fun as Edinburgh, London, Dublin, and Paris. Plus, the only way I'll be spending time is reading books, and pages don't make for good pictures. :) Thanks so much for following along in my journeys. I hoped you enjoyed reading along as much as I enjoyed writing! If any of you write blogs on your journeys, please include me on your lists.
Enjoy the rest of the summer!
Katie
