A few more comments about England

We were traveling on Alitalia and we managed to distribute our baggage weight so that we did not have to pay to over limit weight fee. I think they might have had heavier allowances. So we only had to pay the extra bag fee, which wasn’t to bad.

While we were in London trying to figure out where the money we had exchanged had dissipated to, we were looking up the exchange rate. I kept telling Tim that I swear I had seen exchange rates at 1.65 but that we had paid 1.85. The Internet also confirmed a 1.65 rate.  When we got to the airport, we saw the exchange rate of 1.85 at one window and at the next window 20 minutes later it was dropping, down to 1.71. We are assuming that with the wedding happening, it had gone up for a few days and then dropped as soon as they said, “I do.” We got screwed on the currency exchange, big time. Another royal cock-up. HAHA

One last frustration before leaving London; my backpack got searched. I had to wait a good 10 minutes while they hand searched the guy’s bag in front of me. When it was my turn, I was asked if I had any weapons, it looked like I had a knife on me. I said no. He asked me to unzip my bag. I complied and as soon as I did, I knew what he was after. When I was repacking, I put the souvenirs from Stonehenge in my bag. Tim had purchased a letter opener. It was still in the little box. I told the TSA inspector that’s what it was.  In the US, they would have opened it, confiscated the “knife” and sent the bag back thru the scanner, a 3-minute process. Not in crappy ole England. He didn’t even open the bag I pointed to. He continued searching my bag, very methodically and extremely slowly. He emptied the entire thing out. When he took out the bag of souvenirs, he took out a little measuring tool, at this point I thought Tim was going to come unglued. Tim told him, “Just take it, we are going to miss our flight.” No, no. This man needed to measure it. Arrrgh.

 So, the only souvenir Tim wanted for himself from England got confiscated. My bad for putting it in my carryon without thinking. This search procedure literally took 25 minutes and we really did almost miss our flight. That would have been just “bloody” great!

London has one redeeming quality in my opinion. There is a Starbucks on every corner. I miss American coffee.