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Beth & James's First Class Adventure

Yesterday seems a bit like a blur to me, mostly because it went by so fast. I'm very sick with a cold right now and I was all doped up on cold meds most of the day... which started very early. I had to be at the flat at 7AM so I could wait for both the Homechoice guy and the Telewest guy to pick up the cable boxes. We really should've only had one box to worry about, but they'd forgotten to pick up the other ages ago when we cancelled it, so there were two.

James relieved me at around 8:30 and we went to Starbucks before he came back to let the cleaner in and I went to the hotel to rest and shower and stuff. We had to call the guy who was supposed to pick up our keys at 12:45 (he was supposed to be there at 12:30) and ask him where he was. He reckoned he could get to Shoreditch from Baker Street in 15 minutes by tube. We laughed and ended up leaving the keys with the cleaner.

The car (a Merc people carrier to deal with all of our luggage) came to take us to the airport at 1:00.

Packing for six weeks is difficult. Packing for six weeks and making sure your suitcases don't weigh more than 27kg is even more difficult. We didn't quite succeed there. Our heaviest bag was 27.7kg, but the lady was nice and didn't charge us the $25 extra she was supposed to. When we were checking in (remember, James upgraded us to 1st class) they told us they'd overbooked 1st class and did we did we want to blah blah blah... We weren't appalled but we were a little upset at the prospect of not being able to enjoy our big treat. That said, we didn't get bumped, which is very good.

The first class lounge was nice. :) Quiet. With good wine. And internet. Mmmm.

American is upgrading their first class cabins on trans-continental flights. We got one of these new planes - bonus! Not only did the seats flatten into beds, AND the armrests dropped all the way down so you had more space, the chairs swivelled so you could face the person next to you when you ate and such.

Of course... James didn't get a seat next to me. He got a seat on the other side of the plane. The nice man beside us didn't have a problem with moving, though, so that was good. And we did get to eat facing each other! It was cool!

First class food is different from business class food. They have a salad cart they come around with, so you can make your own salad. And a cheese cart. And a desert cart. Yum! Also, they give you little video tapes so you can watch what you want when you want and pause it and such.

James saw An Inconvenient Truth and I saw Poseidon. I was going to see the former, but they'd run out of that one by the time they got around to me, and when James had finished watching his, I was sleepy. So I slept.

I think the Night Nurse helped with that. Also, the seat/beds were comfortable! We landed and got to the gate and such and as we were getting off of the plane, I felt awful. We got to immigration and queued in the citizen/resident queue (which our lawyers told us to do) for a while, then they told us we had to go to the immigrant queue to get James's visa processed. Fucking lawyers.

By that time I was barely able to stand up, sweating, looked like death warmed over. So we had to take a time-out while I forcibly got over that. Much better.

The second time around, we did get processed. The immigration officer was lovely and nice and joked with us that it wasn't too late for us to go back to England or me to dump James before he finished the paperwork. James had to be fingerprinted and his paperwork was all scrutinized, and then that was it. All done.

The immigration officer was packing heat. This surprised me.

We found our towncar without too much trouble and were ferried to our ExecuStay where we will be living for the next six weeks. There's a Whole Foods on one corner and a Starbucks a block away, so I'm pleased. We haven't gotten our internet working yet, but someone in a room around us has unprotected wifi so we're stealing for now.

This afternoon: apartment hunting. I'm superexcited as one of the places I really liked (not the Verdesian, but another one) is still on the market and has come down in price! And it's 1270 sq ft! We may have a winner....

Anyway, let me know if you need my contact details. They are readily availabe. :)

27 Sep 06 8:43 - Comments (1)

Categories: Daily Droning , Expat , New York , Travel