We're calling this one Day Zero because it wasn't officially part of the 14-day excursion. We decided to take an extra day for travel so that we didn't have to force ourselves to sleep on a red-eye flight. That would have made Day 1 pretty bad for sure, especially if we didn't sleep well.
The flight wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Decent food (a meal and a snack, both of which were edible), got plenty of reading done, and didn’t suffer too terribly in the tightly packed cattle class of the airplane. I think in truth the worst part was probably walking from the gate to passport control, then on to baggage claim – a distance of approximately 9 miles, or so it felt. Then schlepping down the endless train platform to wait for the train to the other terminal, dreading the impending early wake-up, and a choice encounter with an armrest (see footnote)…I had forgotten why I hated Heathrow so much back in ’98 but it was easy to remember.
So this was it: my first time leaving the continent. The only thing really different about the flight, at least initially, was that the subway is now partially open at Dulles. It's a nifty new feature to be sure. The flight, itself, was largely average and uneventful; it was just longer than any flight I've been on, weighing in at about 7.5 hours. London-Heathrow (LHR) is truly the cluster-fuck that everyone says it is. Half of the terminal is under construction, another terminal is being demolished, and it felt like we must have walked a mile or more before we got to passport control. I had been nervous about entering another country, having never been through passports or customs or anything like that, but this was a breeze. We whisked ourselves off to baggage reclaim (as they call it), customs (which had apparently been abandoned for the day) and off to find the YOTEL!
Getting there was quite an ordeal, though. We had to go down a lift to catch a train from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4, up another lift to Terminal 4's departure area, down another lift to the mezzanine area, round a corner, past a pub (which I should have opted for) to a rather nondescript entrance. Check-in was automated and we went down a weird narrow hallway to Cabin 13. It was even smaller than it looked in the pictures. It's fairly impressive that people can live in these spaces, but they're certainly not intended for long-term use. It was also rather hot and stuffy, and the alleged climate control seemed to do nothing. At least it had groovy purple mood lighting, which might have been fun if we hadn't been so tired and needed to get up so early.
Ah the Yotel…what a crapfest. Tiny was to be expected (although it was still ludicrous), but muggy air, a rock-hard bed, and worthless feather pillows were an unforseen torment. The pod itself was clean and efficient, given its size (roughly ½ meter on each side of the bed, plus a glass-walled bathroom), but the bed was essentially a motorized futon, and about as comfortable as a concrete slab. The futuristic look of the bed was enhanced by its wrap-around headboard, which served as an acoustic cave where my snoring echoed painfully in Scott’s ears. That, combined with the temperature and uncomfortable bed, prevented him from sleeping more than an hour or two. I was lucky enough to do a little better, although waking up at 5:10am for our flight to Helsinki was still unpleasant.
Poor Scott…that glassy look in his eyes. I worried about his lack of sleep, his frustration with charming European quirks like feather pillows and no A/C. I worried about myself as his travel companion that I’d be stuck with a cranky, sleepless husband for two weeks. In short, I left the Yotel slightly rested, but altogether more anxious about our trip than I had arrived.
Now five hours ahead of my internal clock and with an 0805 flight impending, it was vitally important to sleep. Due to the odd room environment, the European proclivity toward bulky duvets instead of sheets and the odd acoustical headboard area of the motorized futon they called a bed, I barely slept at all. I tried, very hard, however, to stay positive about Day 1, though, and eventually got a few Zs when I just stopped thinking about it. I'll say a conservative estimate says I got about 2-2.5 hours of sleep that night, coupled with the excited half-sleep of the night before, so an unhappy Scott was bound to appear.
Footnote: while waiting for the train between terminals, Liz misjudged her seat on the bench and sat rather hard on the armrest dividing the seats. This made for a fun story that will be explained later.
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