|
My flight into the UK went
fairly well. I checked into the airport in Toronto fairly early so I
didn't have to deal with any sort of line-ups through the check-in
point or the security points. Unfortunately this meant that I had a
fairly long wait to get onto the plane though. The flight took off at
11:30pm the night before and was due to arrive in the UK at around
11:20am so it was important to get some sleep on the plane so I
wouldn't feel completely beat upon arrival. Fortunately I hit the
jackpot when it comes to seating arrangements as I didn't have anyone
sitting next to me on the plane so the other lady and I had a lot of
room between us to stretch out a little more! Luckily I was extremely
tired when I got on the plane so that I think I fell asleep even
before the plane left the tarmac!
About 1.5 hours into the
flight they served us an onboard meal, which I wasn't really keen on
having since I wasn't really used to eating around 1:00am but decided
to have it anyways. They served us light pasta with a nice cheese
sauce but I didn't really like the chickpea salad they served with
it. While waiting for the attendants to collect the meal trays I fell
a sleep again and didn't wake up for a fairly long time. Over all the
flight was nice and the landing was very smooth!
Since I was located near the
front of the airplane I was able to get off fairly quickly and made it
to the customs area ahead of most people on the flight. This proved
very fortunate as three other flights landed at about the same time as
us and the line up grew very quickly. It only took me about 20
minutes to get through the immigration point and looking back I think
that some people could have been waiting for over an hour to get
through that checkpoint! They really didn't have enough people
working at the customs counter to deal with four flights arriving at
the same time.
After immigration, I found my
way to the luggage carousal and started looking for my suitcase since
they had already unloaded the entire luggage. Unfortunately, one of
the main disadvantages of checking into the airport early for your
flight means that your suitcase will be near the end of the plane and
one of that late ones to come onto the carousal. I waited on the
stairs where the luggage was coming from and waited until I spotted my
suitcase and then quickly made my way to a gap in the crowd so that I
could grab my suitcase and go.
Once my luggage was securely
in hand it was time to get the car. I made my way to the Euro car
counter and gave them my name. They quickly found my reservation and
started looking around for the car that I was suppose to get; a
Vauxhall Astra with a diesel engine. Unfortunately for us the car that
was suppose to be checked in at 7:00am wasn't back and they hadn't
even realised that it was missing. After the clerk made a few calls to
find out what was going on, she decided to give me the only other
automatic car they currently had available that was in the same class;
a Nissan Note 1.6L 5-door petrol. The only drawback to this was that
the car was at terminal 3 and I was at terminal 1 so they sent one of
their workers out to drive the car back to terminal 1 for me to pick
up.
While they went to get the car
for me, I gave Andy a quick call to let him know that I had arrived
safely, checked in without any problems, and was just waiting for them
to deliver the car to me.
It didn't take them long to
bring me the car, but when the person parked it, he blocked a hotel
airport bus that was waiting to pull out so I didn't have very much
time to look around the car and get used to it before I needed to
start moving. This also meant that I wasn't able to get the mount for
the sat-nav unit that was in my suitcase that was already put into the
trunk. So I put the sat-nav on the dashboard in front of me and set
it to take me 'home' and was on my way.
I was warned that it might
take the sat-nav a few minutes to find out where I was and start
giving directions so I decided to try to find my own way out of the
airport until it could give me proper directions. I ended up going
around in circles a few times which wasn't such a bad thing as I got
used to driving the car without a lot of traffic around, remembered to
drive on the left side of the road and eventually even made it onto
the highway without any directions from the sat-nav. Unfortunately I
still hadn't heard anything from the unit when I came to the junction
to get onto ring road around Manchester, but I knew that's where I
wanted to be. The first time I came with mom this is where we made
our biggest mistake so I knew what to expect and positioned myself
into the lane I needed to be in from the signs on the road and made my
way onto ring road without any problems. However I was starting to
get concerned since the sat-nav still hadn't started talking to me and
I was too busy paying attention to traffic and what was going on
around me and didn't have the time to play with an electronic device.
I was trying to look for a service station to pull into so I could
stop and see what was up with the sat-nav but I didn't notice any and
definitely did NOT want to start driving into Manchester. So I
followed the road signs for a while and when I had a moment of clear
traffic I would glance down to see what was going on.
Much to my surprise the sat-nav
was showing me where I was and that I was already going in the right
direction so it was only a matter of figuring out why it wasn't
talking to me. After thinking for a while I remembered that while I
was playing with it back at home I had hit the mute button at one
point and thought that it wouldn't remain muted after it was turned
off but I was wrong and fixed it as soon as I felt comfortable to do
so. It was a while before it gave me my next direction, but as soon
as it spoke to me I was able to relax a lot more and started to enjoy
the drive to Andy's. I made it to his place with minimal fuss and a
lot of confidence in myself and with the car.
After getting to Andy's I
needed some time to relax before we decided to do anything else. It
was nice to be able to stretch out and not feel rushed to get things
done. After a couple hours of this I started to feel hungry and
really wanted to have some famous English fish & chips so we decided
to stake a drive to a chippy in Todmorden called Grandma Pollards
which is said to be the best chippy in the UK. While I didn't have
much to compare it to, I wasn't going to complain, as the fish was
really good!
After we finished our meal we
made our way to visit Andy's dad and had a nice visit with them for a
couple hours. Just as we arrived there the weather turned dark and
rainy which it had threatened to do for a while.
After our visit with them we
went directly back to Andy's as I was starting to feel the effects of
the long flight with minimal sleep for the past couple days and was
getting ready for bed! |
