I'd finally landed in London—and man, Heathrow is big. I was quite worried about my passport not scanning to let me into the country, as it had to be manually checked at Montreal, but thankfully both it and my face scanned and I was let in. A bit of confusion with the baggage claim and down a hallway later, and I'd united with my girl for the first time, stood there in the most Yerf-y wolf moon shirt she owned and big round glasses.
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For all the struggle in getting here, I've become very fond of the airport experience since the trip. Especially in an airport like Heathrow, which is so big, so busy, so open-air (I will never forget the slight chill of the spring breeze wandering through Arrivals at Heathrow, so refreshing and comfy), such an ambassador for London, for lack of a better term—nothing else I've experienced like it. A transient destination, and other such contradictions in terms.
(Gonna be featuring a lot of photos from here on out. Only a scant few of the photos I took on this trip (approaching 500 in all!) made it into this trip diary, so if you want to see the rest, be sure to check the galleries on cabycammy.somnol. For this day in particular, I took a bunch of photos of Heathrow that didn't even go on this page, so yeah, you'll wanna peek over there too.)
I was wiped and delirious, but there was no adjustment process at all. We could even look at each other! It felt exactly like a really good call with no delay at all, no dropouts, just crystal-clear Cabyvoice. I'm gay. We left Heathrow for our hotel room, which she handled and knew the location of...roughly. My girl's from Cardiff, not London. It was an adventure for both of us! In fact, we wound up passing the Travelodge twice in searching for it. (Did I mention I was delirious?)
The Travelodge was a nice little room with a kettle (must be in the UK) and a strange shower (you only turn the knob closest to you, the far one is for temperature) snuggled right between an Iceland and a McDonald's. The first thing I did was deep clean myself of flight grime. Perhaps some frequent flyers would ding us for not experiencing all the crazy cuisine that London had to offer, but we're autistic and being in London was the adventure, so we wound up visiting the Maccy D's twice before we left the following day, getting a share box of chicken nuggies and some haloumi fries, which were delicious and not something our Maccy D's has, so very recommended.
| These were quickly taken with my 3DS instead because I was delirious. I seriously don't even remember taking this one, but I'm guessing it was on the street with the Travelodge. Maybe that, or on the walk to the Travelodge from the Underground station. |  |
| I still would love to know what kind of establishment the Dudgeon is. I would probably visit. (Yeah, I know I can look it up, there's no fun in that.) |  |
| Also, Coomer Place. Because Coomer Place. |  |
Beyond that, really, we just vibed in the hotel room, eating the bag of Takis I brought along for her to try (she really liked them, and also managed to eat them much more gracefully than I did), taking advantage of the Iceland next door and its late closing time to buy drinks, and talking a lot like only excited doofs could. It was all so remarkably free-flowing, and we regularly stood in awe of being here with one another, having made this happen.
Turns out, to all you terminally online people like us? You too can get a passport, book a plane, visit another country, buy a hotel room, and vibe without your parents around. We'd get more adventurous on day two...
We did not go into the ominous big red planet.