USA beckoning we made our way towards the airport. I had stayed the night at Paolo's and his parents were taking us to Terminal 5, Heathrow. It was wet and cold, it was London after all! Once we arrived Paolo's dad tried to sweet talk the check in guy into getting us free upgrades to business class, which kinda worked, he put us on the SFU list (Suitable For Upgrade), this merely increased the anticipation! We had final drinks with Paolo's mum and dad before embarking on our truely epic journey.
Check in went smoothly, security was as standard,Terminal 5 is a big and beautiful place, but a bit cold and characterless. After checking in on Foursquare (the really important check-in in my opinion) we went for a little bit of shopping. I picked up the standard 1L of Jameson's Irish Whiskey in duty free and we found ourselves drawn towards the cigar room! Browsing with wonder (and totally pretending we were more sophisticated and classier than we clearly were) and pretending to know what we were doing, we thought it'd be a good idea to get some celebratory stogeys! Unfortunately you can't take cuban products into america, and seeing as they were all cuban cigars, we had to bail on this plan, perhaps Vegas will present more opportunity.
Knowingly eager we had turned up about 2 hours early for our flight, so we had to sit around for a bit, but being the brand new Terminal 5 and it being built by the British, we got stuck in the internal train between the gates! for about 20 minutes we were stuck, and the whole holiday was up in the air! (perhaps an over dramatisation, but you get the picture)
Boarding our plane and not getting our upgrade we were pleased to have the honour of sitting behind a young baby, who clearly for the entire 7 hour flight, was not happy to be heading towards the USA (well not as much as us) the only thing missing from our flight experience so far with British Airways was getting stuck on the runway for an hour and a half... oh wait sorry, we WERE stuck on the runway for an hour and a half! Well done BA!
There isn't much to say about the flight, apart from the aforementioned crying baby, we were perhaps cracking too many america jokes and trying our silly accents, but nobody said anything. At least we had a couple of drinks to get us through :)
Arriving at the National car rental location it was dark at 8pm, we arrived and was greeted with a choice of 3 cars, a KIA Sorento, Dodge Nitro or a JEEP SUV, they said we could simply choose! We were like 2 kids in candy shop, except with huge ass SUV's! Decisions decisions! We went for the Dodge Nitro, for a couple of reasons, it was a Dodge, it had a cool name, and it was comfortable. Check out the Dodge
However a spanner in the works was about to turn up as the lady disappeared to let us explore the cars, she turned up with a Ford Explorer, which was HUGE! 7 seater, more than we had bargained for, but she had a word with her manager and managed to get us swing us this beauty! (SEE PICS!) Now that we had this larger than expected car, our whole plan to buy tents to camp when we our without accommodation was out the window, the seats in our car fold flat, so we are able to sleep in it!
Upon leaving the rental place we followed the directions that they gave us to Border street, however due to a misunderstanding (on their part!) they sent us towards Porter street! So we were lost, after wondering around in the car for a bit we decided to bite the bullet and do what no man does, ask for directions... after a couple of failed attempts, we parking in front of a mexican cafe and the delivery guy decided to escort us to our location! Damn americans are so nice!
The place we are spending our first two nights is Paolo's great aunt's, Zia Maria, who is a sweet old lady who was trying to over feeding us from the moment we arrived! Prosciutto, Mozzerella, Turkey, Provolone and all the condiments and trimmings! And for Dessert? what else! Cookies and Doughnuts!
Now we are off to bed, and we will be watching our little TV that Zia provided :)
Day one not off to a bad start!
So mileage so far: 00010
Quote of the day:
(while Paolo is looking at the map of America)
Paolo: "Hey look, there's a place called charlotte, reckon we'll be going past there?"
Me: "I don't know about you, but im planning on going IN Charlotte!"
Cue lots of childish giggling!
I expect to meet many friends and make many friends!
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