So…my cousin Trisha and I decided to go to London this year on vacation. You may remember that we went together to Scotland last year, and I’m still SO in love. London, however, was a different story.

Now don’t get me wrong. The city itself is amazing, although gigantic. The people were nice enough (except for one lady in the Kings Station Harry Potter store–I’ll get to that later–much later). And then there was the almost fight between an older gentleman who tried to correct a young man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. THAT almost ended very badly. More about that later, too.

I should have realized this trip was ill-fated when the forecast for North and East Texas that day in May called for thunderstorms–the day we were set to fly out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport or DFW. Trisha was flying from Abilene where she lives, and I was driving from my home near Tyler. I went through some rain and arrived just fine, but her flight from Abilene was cancelled. She drove in bad weather to her son’s house in North Richland Hills, a suburb of Ft. Worth so he could drive her to the airport.

Meanwhile, our flight from DFW to Boston was cancelled due to weather, and I was rescheduled for another flight. Then that flight was delayed. It was delayed at least twice more, and the gate changed three times. I most certainly got my walking in. Trisha wasn’t there yet.

Then the flight was finally going to happen, but Trisha had not arrived. They called for priority boarding, then group one, then group two, and on and on until my group, group six was called. I hung back. Trisha and I were texting back and forth, she saying she was at the airport and trying to get on my flight.

It wasn’t to be. The flight was with British Airways, which had been booked through American Airlines, and there was no way to coordinate that in the few minutes before the plane left. I talked with gate agents and wavered back and forth between boarding and leaving until finally an agent asked for my passport and boarding pass, scanned it, and told me to get on the plane. There was no changing my mind at that point. I was in the system. I’d told them I was waiting for my cousin, but they wouldn’t wait. ; p

So…I took my first overseas flight to London. Trisha wouldn’t get a flight until the next morning. I would deplane in a strange and enormous city and try to find my hotel by myself.

Stay tuned. It gets better….