A Prelude...

9:24pm BST/4:24pm EDT

Day one. Whew. What an ordeal. But I’m here, fed, and in one piece so I guess I can’t complain too much. I was hoping for a day to poke around London and see the sights but… I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s see then…

It all starts right about 24 hours ago, actually. I called United Airlines – the airline I was scheduled to fly with – to ask a few questions about luggage… and was informed that my flight from Dayton to Washington D.C. had been cancelled. Insert panicked face here. They offered me another flight to Chicago, but the flight from Chicago to Heathrow was questionable. Apparently there was some crew issue and it was 50/50 whether the flight was going to take off at all. Turns out it did end up taking off but hey… I didn’t know at the time. So anyway, I called Norwegian Cruise Lines’ agent to inform them and, after much run around, got reassigned to another flight on a different airline – US Airways. It left a few minutes later than my original flight was supposed to and routed me through Philadelphia instead. A pretty similar timeframe, and in the end, not a big deal really.

Get to the Dayton airport… And my bag is 32 pounds overweight. And the people on the phone gave me some incorrect information regarding my baggage. Jerks. Anyway, the lady at the counter was EXTREMELY helpful and found me a box that I somehow managed to pack 40 pounds of stuff into… Apparently you can check 2 bags on international flights free of charge. Remember that incorrect information I mentioned? Whatever… After much hoopla and shuffling stuff around, we made it work, get my bag and box checked, get my carryon situation figured out… Get on the plane.

So I get to Philly and rush from one end of the airport AAAAALL the way to the other end… Arrive huffing and puffing and sweating at my gate, thinking the plane is scheduled to take off in 5 minutes… and there are tons of people sitting around waiting. I’m starving at this point, and of course, everything in the airport is closing down. Manage to get a burger from McDonalds, but they’d already shut down the fryers and drink machines. The whole time, I’m sitting there trying to figure out why the screen says the flight is on time but it’s over half an hour since the plane was supposed to depart… Then they announced boarding was about to begin. Turns out I can’t read my own damn watch. I was thinking it was an hour later than it really was – I hauled ass down to the gate at 9:40, when the plane wasn’t set to depart until 10:45. Bah. Fail. Oh well, no harm done.

Speaking of fail… I was thinking the flight from Philly was going to be something ridiculous like 15-18 hours. Get on the plane and am feeling fairly unhappy about the amount of legroom and… well, room overall. And my dumbass requested a window seat. D’oh. I’m not a claustrophobic person… But thinking about 12+ hours in that cramped seat made even me rather uncomfortable. Once boarding is finished, the captain comes on the intercom and talks about the altitude, speed, flight path, and flight time… Time. A little over 6 hours. Hm I feel like a retard again. But hey, at least the flight wasn’t as long as I was expecting!

Not much to be said about the flight. It was a long, fairly cramped flight. Slept some, watched a movie, listened to music. Only made the guy next to me let me out once, towards the very end of the flight. Flew into the rising sun, which was kind of weird… But neat. Arrived at Heathrow this morning. Lots of jumping through hoops to actually get through the airport. Security checks and having my passport out in a million different places. Got interrogated at the border about where I’d come from, what I was going to be doing, etc. Pretty standard, I imagine. They sound so suspicious when they ask though… Anyway, got to my bag/box… And didn’t see anyone waiting for me. Went to the info desk and they called the company for me… and the taxi guy showed up a few minutes later.

If you didn’t know (I didn’t), Dover is a damn long way from London. I was pretty unaware of this fact and… Well I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for the cab ride haha… I fell asleep more than once on the way. Pretty cool though – the lady I shared the cab with was an American doctor, who’s gonna be on the same ship. The crew doctor specifically. Anyway… Got to the hotel – which is pretty big for how small the rooms are. Just a lot of them in here I suppose. Mostly a nice place though. Turns out I have to share a room with another guy for the night and he’d already checked in when I got here. Small beds. Bah. Took a nap, and woke up around 8:15pm local time (so 3:15 Eastern time… nearly 20 hours since I’d departed, and the first time I’d really slept in that time). I was starving and had no cash. I suppose I assumed too much when I figured NCL would pay for meals while we were here too. There’s an ATM in the lobby and, for lack of any other ideas on how to obtain currency for the eating I went to try it out. I don’t know off the top of my head the conversion rate but I was able to withdraw £10 from the ATM… I also have no concept of how much things cost around here so I wasn’t sure if £10 would cover *anything* to eat. Walked out the door of the hotel – again, hunger and lack of options drove me to do SOMETHING – and started walking around. There’s really only one direction you can walk/drive from the front of the hotel, so I went that way. It’s right across the street from the harbor and the tide was out. All of the boats in the harbor were just sitting in the mud… I mean, when I say the tide was out, it was OUT. Boats were literally resting on the ground… Some tilted to the side a bit. I wouldn’t think that would be GOOD for them, but… Whatever. It’s a neat view anyway.

So I walked around the corner, and there were two little restaurants right there. I don’t remember the name of the second, but I went into the first – Harbour Fish Bar. Both places were run by non-British folks – the second place served kabobs and gyros… Both places had stuff like burgers too. Thankfully, £10 was plenty to get me a good-sized place of fish (cod) and chips (aka french fries) at Harbour Fish Bar. I felt pretty out of place but was pretty proud of myself for figuring it all out and getting food. That and caffeine improved my mood a lot. Came back to the hotel and, again, felt pretty satisfied with myself for operating the Coke machine downstairs. I know that sounds lame but hey… You’d be happy with yourself too, considering the circumstances and the significant lost feeling I’d had earlier in the evening. Glad I’m leaving tomorrow because I really did not do enough research about England to feel comfortable staying here very long.

In other news, apparently it’s Bank Holiday weekend. I have no idea what that means but a bunch of commercials on TV are talking about sales, and traffic was nuts heading the other direction on the M25 (the highway). Might also explain how busy this hotel was today. Also – I need a shower and to shave. Trying to decide if I should do that now or in the morning. I suck at getting up early.

So… Meet the ship in the morning. The adventure begins. I feel like maybe I’ve forgotten something that I wanted to say here, so… if I remember, I’ll put it in later. So… Yeah. Days 1 and 2 come to a close. Or maybe days -2 and -1? I don’t know. This time change is messing with me still haha. Sleep maybe… Til next time…