When we first arrived in England

In an earlier blog, I started to describe our flight over to England on British Air, which was a redeye flight.  We left Baltimore at 9:30 p.m. and arrived at Heathrow airport the next morning at 9:30 a.m.  (which was 4:30 a.m. our time).  Sophia is 2 now, so she had to have her own ticket, which meant she had her own seat, which she loved.  She spent most of the flight playing with the audio and video controls on the arm of her chair.  The first 3 times that she pressed the button to call the flight attendant, they were very kind and polite when I apologized profusely.  The next 9 times that she pressed it, they simply ignored us and calmly shut the button off as they passed by.  

Steve slept through most of the flight and Sophia and I fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.  When we arrived at the airport, we took the tube (subway) to Paddington Station (home of Paddington Bear) and then an above ground train to Bath, where we began our journey.  We tried to pack lightly as we knew we would be moving around a lot in the beginning.  Even so, we had Sophia's stroller, her pack-n-play, one very large suitcase with clothes and toiletries for the 3 of us, Steve's computer bag and Sophia's little bag full of books and some essential toys.  Oh, and we had Sophia.  So hopping on and off trains was a bit of a chore but we got better at it as we went along.  The main difficulty stemmed from the fact that the trains try hard to run on time, so they open and shut the doors soooo quickly.  We almost lost body parts and a bag or two, but somehow it all worked out.  We arrived in Bath and took a taxi to our beautiful apartment that we would stay in for the next 3 days.

I have to mention our stroller - it was a shower gift from our good friend Merri.  Without that stroller, we could not have carried all of our luggage and traveled in the ways we have been able to travel.  It is big and sturdy and comfortable for Sophia and we can carry sooo much stuff.  We've carried the pack-n-play a million miles, carried our groceries, trudged up and down miles of cobblestone roads, been through fields and on and off countless buses and trains.  It folds down into a small bundle so we've been able to take a taxi a couple of times when we had the stroller with us.  All of our taxi drivers have been so impressed with how small it gets when folded.  That stroller has traveled so much, the tread is worn off of the tires!