Days 1-3, London: Busy, busy, busy.

(Posted by Andrew about the events of Dec 12-14; London, England)

Our journey began with a few days in London to visit friends and family. I saved up my remaining upgrade points for the year and got us bumped up to Business Class, but misfortune struck Jessica before we had even left home. In her own words (on the day we left): "I had a poor sleep last night, and now I'm probably not going to get to enjoy Business Class since I'll just sleep the entire way to London." (During the flight I sent a I tried collecting condolences in the form of cash donations from the folk in Economy but they were not receptive to this idea. Selfish!)

We had an insanely busy schedule in London. In two and a half days we managed to attend nine different events/appointments/dates. (A quick hello to Mike, Farhad, Simon, Christelle, Paola, Carl, Samir, Kay, David, Thor, Fiona, Sam, Rosie, Morvern, Katie, Holly, Daisy, Pixie, Maureen, Douglas, Johnathan, Paul, & Claire. Apologies to Howard and James; next time maybe.) While it was enjoyable for us, the real winners are the folks at Transport For London and the British National Rail service who will both enjoy banner years based on the amount of tickets we've purchased over these few days.

Now an aside while we await our red-eye flight to the next leg of this adventure: I'm aware that Jessica has been talking up this blog to quite a few people, and in particular inflating expectations about my comedic prowess as a writer. This leaves me feeling some pressure to come up with a witty and amusing blog posting, but so far I've mostly come up dry since things have been going swimmingly well. The sad fact is that tragedy breeds comedy, and the funniest posts have always been recanting some misfortune befalling us on our trips. At least in the weeks ahead as Jessica & I undergo some logistical,  meteorological, or gastrointestinal catastrophe, we can take solace that our trials will not be in vain when, days later, someone gets 3-5 seconds of amusement from our suffering.