Keeping Calm, and Carrying On

This could be the first page of our scrapbook, as it happened at the beginning. But starting our Ireland scrapbook with a page on London seemed like the wrong order. So here we are at the end, with a part of the trip when we were off the premeditated path a bit, a wee bit. Anyway, thanks for sticking with our scrapbook this far! Here is the story of how it came to pass that we saw Big Ben for the first time.

Shannon Airport in Ireland is a small airport; flying there directly was not an option for us, which led to connecting flights, which led to unforeseen delays. Although we had planned to arrive in Ennis a day early, leisurely get settled in, and recover from jet-lag before the start of the tour (as the tour webpage suggests), our airline had staff shortages, aircraft maintenance, a digital hack, and a number of other explanations for a flight cancellation which left us stuck first, halfway across the US, then (after miraculously getting the last two seats on a midnight flight), stuck second at Heathrow Airport in London.

This seems an opportune time to make a plug for Rick Steves' advice to pack light and carry your luggage on when possible. Our luggage most certainly would not have made it to Shannon, Ireland when we did (if it would ever have joined us again, quite frankly) had we not carried it on—even when that meant hauling it across airports, and up and down broken escalators while running (thanks, Jake!) for a chance to catch a flight in another terminal.

When our second flight from the US landed in London, we had missed the last flight to Shannon for the day by mere minutes. Yet, we carried on. After landing, wasting precious hours at our airline's customer service desk, and brushing our teeth in the Terminal B restroom (which was not a waste of time at all, but supremely refreshing) (not to labor this point further, but in case you missed it, we had our toothbrushes in our carry ons), we had a few hours of daylight to spare. We dumped our belongings at the airport's luggage locker and took the tube to Westminster.