Wednesday 4 July 2012

Day One - the travel


I am finally here. It took twenty-eight hours, but I am finally here!
My lovely grandparents saw me off at the airport at 3:30pm yesterday, along with my lovely boyfriend and his family :)
The first leg of the trip was a five hour flight from Perth to Singapore, which was quite easy to bear and the food was actually quite good. At Singapore airport I had a mishap on the monorail and accidentally rode it end to end twice :S (granted it only took five minutes to get from one end to the other). At 10:30pm I got on another plane (Perth and Singapore are on the same time) and it took thirteen long, arduous, ankle-swelling hours to arrive at Heathrow. We were served two meals on that flight, a dinner and a breakfast. The dinner was again quite delicious, but the breakfast was not terribly appetising - I'll post a photo later and you can tell me what you think it was ;) We arrived at Heathrow at 5:30am and were greeted by the longest queue in the world to get through the border. I kid you not: a basketball court-sized area with queue dividers over every inch of it, and people in line snaking through the whole room. It took over an hour just to get through the line, but once through it was fine. I was then reunited with my luggage and made my way to the Central Bus Station, where I bought a ticket for the coach to Cambridge leaving at 7:00am. The coach took 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the city centre, and from there I hopped in a taxi to the guest house where I'm staying for the next few days. The taxi driver was very helpful, and during the drive pointed out where I could hire a bicycle, buy groceries, get dinners and lunches etc. He also explained UK currency to me; apparently it looked like I didn't understand pounds and pence ;)
Now I am sitting in my hotel bed trying to stay awake until tonight: it's currently 12:00am, but for me it's 7:00pm! Also, I've had five hours sleep out of the last 48 - I do not respond well to losing sleep.
Given the length and complexity of this journey, and that I did it all on my own for the first time, I think it went very well. The only major inconvenience suffered so far has been my suitcase; when I picked it up from baggage reclaim I found that one of the wheels had broken off. Now when I need to wheel it anywhere half of it drags on the ground :( luggage fail.

~ Jemimah