England - Day One

Low and behold we actually left the house on time at 4pm. Our flight wasn't until 9pm but we wanted to give ourselves loads of time since we have Ephraim with us. We got to the Park N Fly, but the economy lot was full (drat!) but they gave us a free upgrade to valet, which is way nicer and has way better perks. So, very nice start to the trip.

EPHRAIM FIRST: Shuttle Bus!

Got to security and they more or less ripped apart my laptop bag, all because the power adapter for my MacBook Pro apparently looks like a bomb (thanks Steve Jobs), although on the plus side by going through every nook and crany I found the earbuds I thought I'd lost, and my wallet that looks like a map went undetected (great gift Andrew!)

EPHRAIM FIRST: Being frisked by security!

We then ate overpriced over-saturated airport food and found our gate and let Ephraim run around to try and expel energy. He became a crowd favourite. We were hoping he might fall asleep prior to boarding. He didn't.

EPHRAIM FIRST: International Flight! (technically first flight anyway, if you don't count when he was an embryo on Emily's trip to Manitoba.

Ephraim slept almost the entire flight. We, however, did not. I think Em might have gotten an hour. I think I nodded off here and there. At best I got half hour scattered in little pieces. Not enough. Iron Man 2 and The Bounty Hunter were the inflight movies. Because I was convinced that I could fall asleep I didn't bother with the headsets. And I gotta tell you, there's something to be said about watching a film without sound and seeing how well the story translates with just the visuals.

Boarded in Gatwick and somewhere along the way one of the wheels fell off of one of our suitcases. It is now very annoying to try and carry. And Emily was delirious from lack of sleep and wouldn't stop laughing at me. We forgot the write down our hotel's number and so therefore couldn't call a shuttle from the payphone (no more phonebooks :() so we took a cab for 4x the price. I was tired, hungry, smelly, and a few other dwarves so I didn't give a rat's ass at that point.

Got to the Arora Hotel in Crawley, checked in, ate, took a nap, and got kinda/sorta lost walking around town. Found an awesome limited edition Hagan Daaz ice cream at the supermarket when we were buying some fruit.

Had baked beans on a potato for dinner. It was awesome.

And now it's 7:30pm (there time), 2:30pm our time. And I'm kinda/sorta considering going to bed… Want to rest up, early train ride out to Dorset tomorrow.

Early sleep ended around 10pm when Ephraim woke up, assuming he had just been put down for an afternoon nap. Poor guy's like a clock (but with no international setting) Amidst trying to get him to sleep I decided to take him for a walk around Crawley. Wow. Different (seedy) city at night. We witness two physical fights, three verbal, and got offered to go out for a drink by two women.

Ephraim finally went back down around midnight.