Travel Days Are Never That Great (trying hard not to be too negative)

Left LA Thursday afternoon.  Arrived in London Friday afternoon.

First, to get the less good stuff out of the way.  TSA took apart one of my bags (why do they think it's cool to not tell you what they're doing, what they want you to do, or what's going on?)  Got my bag back and repacked it.  When we got to London, I realized some stuff was missing.  Not a lot, but truly an inconvenience.  And the worst is that you're (or I get this way anyway) so fogged in mentally from the travel that things just don't connect.  So, we got to the apartment and unpacked and I realized that (vaguely) somethings weren't there.  I kept going back to my luggage and running my hands through the bottoms of the bags and opening zippers, but continued to come up empty.  At one point Friday night I thought that I was missing a)both my spare pairs of glasses, b) my computer distanced glasses, c) toothbrush and toothpaste, d) my electric razor and charger, and e) cholesterol meds.  Turnout out that I did have (a), but didn't realize till Sunday that I was missing an (f) a journal that I'd brought with me.

I wonder if the feeling through all of this is how alzheimers' patients feel -- you know you used to know something, but aren't even quite sure what you don't remember.  It wasn't until Sunday evening that the fog had cleared enough that I could specifically remember the part of packing where I'd put together the 2 small bags that had gone missing.  So, there it goes.  I lost one pair of glasses -- a real spare pair, the meds, a small journal, and the razor.  All in, it's worth about $150 (assuming my Dr. agrees I shouldn't bother trying to find someone here to prescribe the meds, that I just go without for the month).  So, I have to say it... "f*** the TSA".  I'll try to be more cheerful in the future.

The plane itself was great.  Very smooth flight.  The ambien bought me 4 or so hours sleep.  Flight attendants were nice.  Gave me my own quart bottle of water to drink because I was asking them for refills so often.  Landed 20 minutes early.  We'd arranged a ride to the apartment and the driver was there.  The person who was meeting us at the apartment was there when we arrived.  The apartment is great (probably more on this on later).  And we settled in without any problems (aside from that vague, "gee, where's my razor.  And my toothbrush... etc.)

Spent Friday getting transit cards -- we discovered a few years ago how advantageous it is to buy an monthly transport pass.  They we can without hesitation hop on a bus or train to go one stop to save just even a tiny bit of walking.  Also bought SIM cards for unlocked phones (mine needed to be replaced with a London purchased one, but that was just a minor thing). 

Harrods is just a couple minutes walk, so we wandered (and I do mean wandered) over there, stopping at Starbucks for emergency coffee rations) and bought some takeout pies (meat pies) for dinner.  No real grocery stores w/in walking distance so from Friday through Sunday we relied on a Marks & Spencer convenience store (like a 7-11 but more actual food) for meals we've eaten at the apartment.

Ambien doesn't work that well, for us anyway, to overcome fundamental jet lag.  So a spotty night sleep.  But, our travel day was done and we were headed into our first weekend in London.