Even though it's two or three days after the fact, I'm writing this post anyway. I have a heck of a lot to write because my friends have started to bother me over email about it. I have totally lost my sense of time because of the traveling. Jetlag and time zone change do not bode well with my mental clock. So I think it's Wednesday but I can't be sure.
We woke up at 5 am on Monday. I woke up on my own, as I always do when I tell myself to. Alarm clocks are backup. When I know what time it is, I can always wake up on time, as long as I slept enough. Which I sort of did.
So we woke up and got everything together. I had a cereal bar, some candied ginger, and a glass of milk for a semi-breakfast. I ended up having three meals that were supposed to be breakfasts. The taxi arrived at 6 am and we were off. I said a silent goodbye to the house and my neighborhood before my uncle, who was at our house, called to say that we forgot the charger for one of our computers. So we circled back and I said a second goodbye. The drive to the airport was fairly uneventful.
We went through security and went to find somewhere to have another breakfast. There was a Starbucks not far from our gate and I got a fruit parfait which was a pretty good second breakfast. And the sugary first breakfast I'd had wasn't going to last. After eating and waiting, we boarded the plane to London. Can I mention that I was extremely excited to be in the UK, if only for two hours?
The route to the runway was a goodbye route for me. You could see the Boston skyline and it really felt like a decent goodbye. When we took off we flew over the Islands. They looked like tiny diorama models of the city. I don't think I've ever had such a good view of the harbor during takeoff. I even spotted Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket through a gap in the clouds.
Seven hours on a plane, as bad as it might sound, isn't all that horrible. My dad told me not to sleep on the first flight so that my sleep schedule would be better once we reached Israel. I get really bad jetlag, so I obeyed. I sat down to write a detailed log of the morning, which I am referring to as I write this post. Then they brought breakfast. I wrote down exactly what it was:
a cheese omelet
potatoes
mushrooms
2 orange slices
grapes (or, as I say with my retainer, grapesh)
1 slice of honeydew melon
1 muffin
1 bottle of water
1 pack of crackers with fake spreadable cheese
pretzel sticks
1 cookie
1 Kitkat candy bar
It really wasn't a bad breakfast. That was my third. For airline food, it was pretty good.
I sat there reading for about another hour. I finished my book. Unfortunately, it was on my nook and I couldn't get the sequel through internet because of course there wasn't any. So I filmed my brother in the seat behind me and the clouds outside. That took up another hour, because I discovered that my old camera has a ton of settings to play with and was testing them all out.
Since we were flying eastward, the day was short. The sun set at 1 pm. That freaked me out a bit, because I realized it was fifth period at school. I read a food magazine that was in my mom's seat-back pocket, which made me hungry. I don't know how long it was before they brought lunch:
a turkey and cheese sandwich (and some mayonnaise)
1 Twix bar (which I was psyched about since Twix is my favorite)
Shortly after lunch, we landed. The local time in London was something around 8:30 pm. We were rather rushed, since we had only two hours between flights. I was really excited about the British accents everywhere, which I couldn't help but imitate later on. My favorite line was the recorded announcement that I heard as someone was checking our tickets: "Attention. Any unattended baggage will be removed and destroyed." It's not so much the content as the voice that made me crack up.
After wandering about the distinctly mall-like section of the airport where our gate was, I located a Harrods store and some designer shops, but I obviously didn't enter any of them. Then, half an hour early, we boarded the plane. I snatched a "Welcome to London" pamphlet from the pile in the hallway-thing on the way to the plane. We sat around for the ten minutes it takes for boarding and preparation. Shortly after takeoff, we received the best airline food I've ever had:
chicken curry
rice
cole slaw (which was bright purple)
water
roll of bread (and butter)
chocolate-caramel mousse (the best part - how can something with chocolate and caramel not be good?)
After the meal, someone came by with some tea, which made me smile. I watch way too much charlieissocoollike. I would have gotten some tea if I hadn't been planning to sleep. I ended up only snoozing two hours, which did not make up for my overall lack of rest. I had to wake up, however, because we were going to land. I did not want my ears to pop.
Landing in Israel is always pretty. You fly over Tel Aviv to land in an airport not too far from the city, but far enough that you fly over some fields of crops. After we landed, the captain informed us of the time and temperature over the PA. "Welcome to quite a lovely morning here in Tel Aviv...we're about twenty-five minutes ahead of schedule, I hope that suits you."
Cups of tea drunk this year: 3
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