England, day 1

Greetings from the little island across the pond. It's currently 3:50am, and even though I went to bed only about 4 hours ago, my confused body still thinks it's only 9:50pm, so I'm wide awake.

My flight left at 7:10am yesterday morning, and after an early cab ride, I made it to the airport before even the British Airways customer service people. About 20 people were already in line to check in by the time I got there just after 5 am, but the BA employees didn't show up until about 5:15.

The flight was relatively uneventful... it was the first time I've flown on a 777, so that was neat. There were a couple toddlers sitting across the aisle from me, and I was very impressed at how well-behaved they were for the entire 6 hour flight. I watched Derailed during the first part of the flight, but I fell asleep later during Good Night and Good Luck, so I can't really recommend either one.

Lauren met me after I went through customs and picked up my bag, and then we took a cab to get from Heathrow to her apartment in Windsor. But instead of just heading outside to where you would expect a bunch of cabs to be lined up, we had to call one. The cab turned out to be a Mercedes, which I realize doesn't have the same luxury status here as it does in the US, but it was still nice. :)

After getting to the apartment and dropping off our stuff, the two of us and Lauren's roommate John went out to a bar/restaurant called Brown's to have a drink and some food. The only beer that I recognized on tap was Amstel, but I wasn't about to get a beer in Windsor that I could get at home, so I tried an Erdinger, which is a German wheat beer. It came in the most ridiculously tall skinny glass, but it was surprisingly good. We also got an appetizer titled "Rocket, Parmesan, and Flatbread" which was a bunch of dark green lettuce-type veggie (i.e. rocket) and parmesan cheese piled onto some flatbread and doused with olive oil. It was pretty good too, although I now (still?) have killer garlic breath.

We walked home along the River Thames and I got to see a little more of Windsor, albeit in the dark. Far and away, the main attraction in Windsor is Windsor Castle, but the town itself is otherwise very quaint and was very quiet at 11pm on a Monday night. The streets are very narrow and all of the residential buildings we passed are all just two stories high. They looked like townhouses because everything was connected. Postage-stamp yards looked pretty common.

Just down the street from Lauren's building (which is much newer, so it's 3 stories tall) is a roundabout, which we drove through on the way home from the airport and on the way to Brown's. I've decided the only thing more nerve wracking than driving through a regular rotary would be driving through a British rotary where traffic is going the wrong way and you're sitting on the wrong side of the car. :)