London to Valencia

This past Friday, we left London for Valencia. It was an adventure stacked on the adventures of our stay in London. Above you see the hilly terrain of central Spain out the airplane window.



So, on New Year's Eve, Garrick Theater to a splendid production of Don Quixote. I highly recommend it. There was good acting, lots of fun, good music, and a fair amount of breaking the 4th wall. As near as I could tell, it followed Cervantes story reasonably well.

The real fun began on the way home. As you might imagine, at 10:30 when the show was over, the crowds near Leicester Square were getting larger and the streets were closed to traffic. Both Covent Gardens and Leicester Square tube stations were exit only so we headed to Tottenham Court Road to catch a ride home.

Along the way, unbeknownst to us, Elizabeth's wallet was stolen.

When we got home, we discovered this and got on the phone cancelling credit cards. We discovered, to our dismay, that all our credit cards have the same number on them so cancelling one, shuts off both. Fortunately, one card did not suffer from this, my debit card with the bank. Thus, we are operating on a combination of cash and a debit card. Jeanne helped a lot as well with hotels and such as we made the transition from house sitting to travel.

The real problem was that E's passport was in her wallet. this put us in a position of needing to act quickly. The passport was taken on the 31st and we were flying to Spain on the 4th. Everything is closed on the 1st. E was able to get an appointment on the morning of the 2nd at the US Embassy to get a replacement passport. We gathered documents and filled out forms.

The appointment was early, 8:30, and we got there at 7:30 because I'm always paranoid about being late. We were the second in line and zoomed right in. There was a photobooth where we could get a proper photo (England has a different size standard, so those won't work). IN less than an hour, we were back on the street with a replacement passport in hand.

All went well and we are now in Valencia. Today was also a bit stressful, though not nearly as bad as the pickpocket ordeal. We stayed in a hotel at Heathrow that is connected to Terminal 4. Turns out our flight left from Terminal 5. This involved some walking, elevators, trains. Several attempts the previous night to check-in online failed so we had to check in and check luggage.

Our tickets said British Airways so that's where we went. Couldn't check in at the kiosk there. finally found a person who did some checking for us and learn that it was really an Iberia flight and cross listed with British Airways. So off to Iberia we go. These folks were great and got us all checked in, no problem. We had breakfast at the Giraffe and walked to the gate with boarding in progress and walked right on the plane. That is closer than I like to make it, but OK, it worked.

We had to change in Madrid. Here things were a little scarier. There was an announcement on the plan about connecting gates that, in my drowsy state I didn't quite catch, but is sounded like concourse 'M' or 'N' but I wasn't sure. E was even more asleep that I was.

We checked our boarding pass to find that we a short connection, less than an hour. First step was immigration. We expected a line with delays and lots of questions. After all, what we had read said that we needed a return ticket to get in the country. There was no line for non-EU citizens and all the officer did was stamp our passports...no questions.

We discovered that there is no 'N' concourse, so we went with 'M'. Our flight was not listed on any of the departures schedules.

To get into concourse 'M', we had to go through security again. Turns out that the pair of pliers that I carry in my pack caught the attention of the officers and was confiscated. Another delay.

Finally in the concourse, we found a display that listed our flight and we headed to the gate. we were loaded on a bus and driven to the plane.

Finally in Valencia, we too a taxi to the hotel and settled in for a good night's sleep. We're safe and sound now in our house sit and at least some of our credit cards are coming directly to us here. so, we're back on an even keel here and life is good.

There will be several more days of London blog entries before you start seeing Valencia. But when the Valencia posts start, you can likely expect photos from some pretty amazing churches.