Planes, planes, and more planes

Saturday 28th July 2012

A loooooooooong journey to get here! I was up at 5:30am and left the hostel in London just after 6, and I arrived at the hotel in Antigua, Guatemala at approximately 5:30am GMT on Sunday morning.

Highlights:

getting an aisle seat on each of my three flights

watching Damsels in Distress and In Time on my London to Newark flight

watching new episodes of Glee and Once Upon a Time (probably the one I'm missing this Sunday)

getting my vegetarian meal about half an hour before the "regular" meals - yay for veggie perks

the yummy "Peach Passion" fruit smoothie in Newark airport

eating spinach and mushroom pizza in Houston airport

         

Low points: 

• no food on two out of three flights
• arriving at Heathrow to find out I should have completed something called an ESTA to be able to enter the US (even in transit) and the mild panic that set in as I went off to find a computer to complete the application
• spending most of all three flights feeling absolutely freezing - silly air con

I got my first couple of stamps in my passport (yay) and managed to heave my bag back onto my back, despite feeling absolutely shattered. (It weighed 19.8kg at Heathrow - oops!) I was really relieved to see my airport transfer waiting for me when I left the airport, even if he was holding a sign for someone called "Mike Cloughlin" haha. (I made sure it was definitely for me by asking him the name of the hotel first.) He was nice enough to stop at a shop on the way so I could get some water, too.

The hotel seems nice, and the room's fine. The owners don't speak English, though, and my Spanish is limited to about twenty words or so, but so far we're managing!