Okay… I left Stratford on the 6:10am train to Reading where I had my return RailAir bus ticket direct to Heathrow. I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, or so I thought.  Ha!

Thursday turned out to be the stand-in-line-at-airports day. The ticketing folks at Heathrow sent me to check-in; check-in sent me back to ticketing; finally back to check-in; and then a 2nd time in check-in to check my bag, which apparently was too big to carry on though I’d done carry on on the way over. So, by the time I got through all that hassle and went through security, I had about 30 minutes to relax before boarding my 11:50am flight.

Off to Amsterdam. Cool, I thought. Never been to Amsterdam, even if it’s only in the airport. Well… because of the ticket screw ups, I had to go to the gate to get my seat assignment there. And unfortunately, that meant going through security, giving up my gate pass, and waiting over an hour before the ticketing folks would give me a seat. In other words, I had no time to wander around the airport to pick up any trivial souvenirs like a coffee mug or country magnet. Darn!

Finally got my seat assignment and had to board the plane right away.  Landed in Minneapolis about 9 hours later. 1.5 hours later, boarded my flight for Kansas City. The 2 hour drive from KC to Manhattan was tough. I think I had managed 2-3 hours of something resembling sleep since I’d departed Stratford at the crack of dawn. I had to roll the windows down numerous times. It was hard to concentrate on the road!

All’s well that ends well. Back to real life.