I arrived in London on the 16th, at 6 in the morning. The next time I fly, if I'm not going to London, I think I'll either just fly to London and catch a train where ever it is I'm going, or I'll fly with an airline that flies direct. It was a bit of a waste of time waiting in London airport for 2 hours for a 30 minute flight to Manchester. On the other hand, the plane wasn't a QANTAS plane, and there were only 10 of us on the flight, so they gave us this small plane where all the seats were business-class seats! Very roomy, and the food they served was 10 times better than QANTAS food (a real English breakfast, eggs, bacon, sausages: delicious!).
When I arrived in Manchester, I couldn't remember the name of the place we were staying so when the Immegration guy asked, I had to call mum and find out. Anyway, I think he might have been a bit suspicious that I didn't know, so he gave me the third degree with all the questions: "How long are you staying?" "Is it just for a holiday?" "Are you meeting your mother here?" "How long has she been here?" "Did she come from Sydney as well?" "Will you be leaving the UK?" "Do you have family living here?" etc, etc. Once I got through that, though, I was home free.
I waiting outside from mum for about 45 minutes before she finally arrived (I learnt later that she and my grandmother got lost quite often driving around back streets...). But they eventually got there, and after a bit of trouble paying for parking (I asked whether you were supposed to pay for parking before going back to the car and mum said, "uh, I don't know...". So I went and paid before we left).
We didn't have much trouble getting from the airport to my cousin Kristy's house (actually, she's the wife of my cousin. Actually, I
don't think he's actually my cousin: he's the son of my mum's cousin, so I don't know what that makes us). She's very nice, and
very pregnant with her second child (her first born is a charming little lad). We didn't stay long, because my mum was a
bit worried about the trouble we'd have trying to get back to the caravan park where we were staying the night.
Though we made it OK. Trying to get lunch at 2:30pm is a real difficulty here. I don't know if it's the UK in general, or just the country towns (country towns in Australia all close down in the afternoon, too, so that could be it) but nobody - nobody - serves lunch after 2pm! It's actually quite amusing walking into the pubs and seeing all the locals look up from their drinks to eye you off. The bar men and women are friendly enough, telling us that sorry, we've missed lunch but maybe we could try the supermarket or one of the "cafés" down the road. Well, I don't know if the definition of café is different here than Australia, but we didn't find any. Instead we found a pie/cake shop and bought some sausage rolls and pasty's to eat.
We got back to the caravan park around 3:30pm, and I layed down on the couch and promptly went to sleep. I think it was the flight finally catching up to me. I didn't get up for dinner, and eventually just moved from the couch to my bed and slept the night in my clothes.