Westward bound

I scribbled these notes in London.

I’m as far as London.  Landed at Heathrow 20 minutes ago, and I’m through immigration, customs, etc and am waiting on the platform at the tube station.  My bag is checked all the way through to DC, so there was nothing to collect, etc.  I spend a night in Knightsbridge again, and I’m back on the plane tomorrow at 4:30ish for an arrival around 7:30pm.

Well, it’s tomorrow and I’m in Heathrow with just under an hour to go before boarding for the flight home.  Of course I couldn’t sleep this morning and woke up at about 4:30am local time.  I putzed around in my (small but adequate) room, read, watched some Saturday (early) morning TV and read a bit.  Come round 8:00 I struck out to find breakfast and Buckingham Palace, with my camera loaded with fresh batteries.  I took a couple pictures which I’ll load up shortly.

I passed the rest of the morning at the Natural History Museum, and I have to say that they’ve got some really cool stuff there.  Since I only had a couple hours, I stuck to one wing and breezed through it at that.  The fossils that are on display are fascinating and some of them are incredibly complete. There was a great exhibit about Earth’s powerhouse and it covered plate tectonics, volcanism and earthquakes. Another exhibit was on the changing nature of Earth’s surface with some hands-on exhibits demonstrating erosion from water and wind, wave action, compression forces and the like.  There was lots of stuff to touch and buttons to push to make things happen. It was a perfect place to be a guy.

For lunch I found a French sandwich place (boulengerie or something like that) which was even populated with a genuine Frenchwoman. We got totally tripped up over each other’s accents; it was great!

For this last leg home, I’m up in the front of the plane, having used miles to score an upgrade to business class. A little comfort on the flight will be welcome, since there wasn’t much on either of the legs from Dhaka.  Emirates is a fine airline, but the economy seats were so narrow.  I’m not terribly broad-shouldered, but I was sitting next to another gentleman and there was simply one arm too many for the space. Eating was a challenge.  Just sitting was a challenge.  Oh well, that shouldn’t be the case on this leg.

As I sit here, I’m keeping one eye on the runway. I keep hoping to see one of the new Airbus A-380s come or go.  I know that Singapore air is flying them now, and, other than Singapore, this would be the place to see one in action.