Europe 2001: Crossing the Pond

 Here is the account of my very first solo (-ish) vacation!  Me and one of my best friends, Amber, decided during our senior year of high school that we should finally make good on our promise to travel together, and so we scraped together our savings and bought tickets to Europe.  The plan: Visit seven cities across three countries in a little under three weeks!

 Our plane from Anchorage to Seattle was uneventful.  We arrived in Seattle at 6:00 am.  Our plane from Seattle to London wasn’t leaving until 6:00 pm.  What does one do during a 12-hour layover?  We left our luggage in a locker (2 dollars per 4 hours of security) and wandered around.  Later we collected our bags and went to the USO to take naps.

We stayed until noon, but I was not able to sleep very well because I was worried we might sleep beyond our flight time by accident.  When we left the USO we stopped at a bookstore where I bought a copy of “Into Thin Air”.  We went to the terminal where our flight was supposed to be and waited for boarding time to roll around.

We checked in at the gate and found out that we could not take our bags onto the flight because they were too heavy.  We moved some stuff into our backpacks and let the British Airways people take our luggage to the cargo bay.

The flight, had I not been up for over 36 hours already, was somewhat tolerable.  I was unable to sleep very much because of uncontrollable leg spasms brought on by the cramped seats.

My brother, me, Amber, and my mom.  Remember the days when you could go through airport security even if you weren't flying?  This picture was taken six weeks before 9/11