We’ve been grounded by the London fog (photo at right taken from train as we were leaving the airport). We arrived at London City Airport this morning to find it swimming in thick pea soup… ick! The airport was a zoo and all flights in and out of the airport had been canceled for the day — we chatted with the nice folks at Lufthansa by phone as we stood in line for the ticket counter. We’re now booked on a flight out of Birmingham tomorrow (Northwest of London — about 1:15 train ride away).
Flying from Birmingham was much more attractive than taking the next available flight from London as most of the flights leaving the city have been affected by fog delays and cancellations over the last day leaving hordes of stranded travelers vying for the seats available — the next available flight from London would have been on December 24th! We’re able to salvage a couple days of our trip (and still make it to the Nuremberg Christmas Market). Fingers crossed that all goes well… we hope for clear skies over Birmingham.
Couple lessons from the experience:
- ALWAYS take your cell phone with you — even if you don’t plan to use it at your destination (that allowed us to get ahead of the city’s other travelers who were also waiting in line)
- Check, double-check and triple-check to ensure you’re flight’s on-time before leaving home… check the minute before you leave home, in fact. In bad weather, the status changes frequently.
Other happier notes from our day… we ambled along Finchley Road this afternoon in search of a new cosmetics bag and stumbled upon a HUGE snowman. Then, we visited the grocery to pick up a few snacks for tomorrow’s travels and came upon another interesting find… Kinder Hippos. Kind-of like Kinder Bueno bars (my favorite), but in the shape of a hippo. Ahhh… Christmas!
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