Preface: Long Post, I apologize in advance.
Well something had to go wrong now didn't it? Of course.
My parents dropped me off at RDU at 1:30 yesterday to catch my 3:30 flight to Boston. Everything was going well until we taxied out onto the runway. Its 3:45 and we are heading for the strip when the plane stops. The pilot comes on and tells us there has been a "groundstop" for all traffic heading into Boston. He doesn't know if this will take 15 minutes or an hour to clear up. So we sit put.
45 minutes later the plane heads back to the terminal and they proceed to drop us off and say "sorry, the flight has been cancelled." You can imagine the panic this caused considering I was one of about 15 people on this flight with a connection in Boston leaving at 6:40 for London. Everyone immediately swarmed the ticket counter upon re-entering the terminal so I was lucky in two ways.
1) I did not stand in line for said ticket counter and 2) I was traveling alone
Instead of standing in line I went and sat down and called Delta International's customer service number and told them what had happened. I said that I didn't care where I had to go through or how they did it but I wanted to be in London the next day. She searched around and happened to find that there was an American Airlines direct flight from RDU to London Heathrow leaving in one hour. Get this, it was in the same terminal, just a few gates down. I said that'd be great and she placed me on the flight while i ran down the terminal to check-in at the counter.
The ladies at the counter looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was just added to their flight. They claimed it was way overbooked (here we go again...) but by some miracle they looked it up and sure enough I was on the flight. After spending 5 and a half hours in the airport I finally was able to board for London. It is worth mentioning that this aircraft I boarded was generations older than the nice Delta jet I had reserved. I had also purchased an upgrade to economy comfort which, yep you guessed it, does not transfer between airlines. Instead I was crammed in the window seat of the second to last row on the whole plane with non-existant leg room.
I'll try to stop complaining about the flight since I did in fact make it to London. Speaking of London, the customs officials are way more strict than they are in the US. I've flown in and out of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and had the typical "business or pleasure?" question and perhaps a followup and that is all. This guy wasn't having it. It was "business or pleasure?" and when I replied "pleasure" he said "no, really. why are you here?" This caught me off guard and I had to resist a smart ass comment which in hindsight may have landed me in a cell for the day.
After explaining what I was doing, stopping in London for a week and then heading to Kosovo, he asked if I could prove it. I didn't have my documentation printed out for my flight next week so I actually could not prove this. I said well its a study abroad program for my University and he asked for documentation on that. Well shit. I didn't have that either. He was obviously irritated with me but after some sweet talking I was let through.
It is clear that British Police do not mess around.
Luckily that was the end of my troubles. I befriended an Australian man on the 30 minute metro train into London and then hung out at a cafe for about an hour before walking around for some sight-seeing in central London. I have some good pictures to upload later since I somehow stumbled upon the changing of the Royal Horse Guard, which was pretty neat. Also, in a strange coincidence I decided to have lunch at a place called the Red Lion and congressman McIntyre was sitting at the table next to me. I thought that was neat.
Alright I'll wrap up this marathon post now. I just awoke from a 2 hour nap in my dorm room and I'm about to go out and explore some more. I'll try to post some pictures later and you can expect another update post tomorrow. By the way its 7:00pm here for all of you confused about the time difference.
-Taylor