The Adventure Begins

It was a pleasure to fly out of Heathrow Terminal 5 for the start of our holiday.

We arrived in VERY good time, due to my mate Paul worrying that there’d be loads of traffic, but actually, about 20 minutes after we left the house, we arrived at Heathrow and started trying to check in. To my annoyance, 2 minutes after leaving the house, the strap of my my chosen (read “large”) handbag snapped like a tightrope wire, leaving me with a largely useless bag. However, airports are nothing if not opportunities to spend money, and so I was able to find a very nice replacement scant minutes after we’d checked in our bags.

And so we decided we’d get through security as quickly as possible, and pressing on, collecting our clear, plastic pouches into which we could slip the toothpaste, handcream and other liquids we’d insisted we couldn’t do without. Our trepidation grew as we were funnelled into the main security area. Expecting every moment to be stopped and shot (I know, we’re still in London at this point), we carefully placed everything into little trays, and watching our belongings disappear into the bowels of the scanning machine, stepped towards the metal detector...

And that was it. Lottie suffered a quick pat down, which had to be done in front of me, we didn’t have to remove our shoes, and our stuff was returned without question or investigation. In addition to which the security people were, to a person, helpful and informative, which was a completely different story from those in the US. But I race ahead where baby steps are needed.

After security, we stopped for breakfast, and spying a Wagamama, decided to have breakfast there – apparently that’s the only branch of the chain which serves breakfast.

The flight was not quite 8 hours long, and I had a massive dilemma. I SO wanted to watch some of the movies available on board, but I found myself unable to sleep through movies I hadn’t watched before, and I wanted to sleep so that I wouldn’t feel too jet-lagged on arrival in the US. I suspect I couldn’t sleep through previously unwatched movies because I didn’t actually want to miss anything, a suspicion confirmed when I managed to sleep quite successfully through much of “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows!”

And so we arrived in Chicago. And this is where security really kicked in. I do wonder just who they think they’re actually deterring. There’s the immigration paper you have to fill in on arrival, asking such questions as, “Do you have any seeds you are importing into the United States of America?” and many others. The sort of questions to which you have to answer “No”, or risk not being able to come into the country. Except that you’d have to be some kind of simpleton to answer “Yes” to any of the questions, because it’s very clear that such an answer would result in expulsion from the country. Do they really believe that anyone actually doing these things will answer Yes? I’m pretty convinced that most terrorists are substantially cleverer than that. Really, correct me if I’m wrong!

I was, initially, delighted by the security officer dealing with our line, as he was SUCH a spectacular stereotype. He was a slightly portly gentleman of a certain age, with what has to be, no question, THE best brush cut hair do I’ve ever seen!! Unfortunately this delight soured as people were delayed beyond what seemed reasonable, and people who’s English was somewhat less than perfect were treated to hand gestures – which may not have been a problem had the people in question been looking at our security guard at the time. The turnaround time of two hours had seemed rather generous, until one realised that we had to go through this, pick up the bags, recheck them and make it across the airport to another terminal to board our onward flight. We ended up running, gasping, onto the next flight.

This flight wasn’t anything like as nice as the trip over from the UK, but the stewards were just as lovely, and were able to provide me with a fair facsimile of a cup of tea for the flight!

We were delighted to arrive at Orlando airport and before we’d managed to find baggage claim, were collected ourselves!

The adventure continues as soon as I can...