4, 3, 2….1

It’s always great to be back in Londontown, even if it’s just at the airport.

I have made it to the UK and am currently waiting in Heathrow for my connecting flight to Edinburgh, sadly not in Terminal 5. (To give you an idea, Gordon Ramsey has a restaurant in Terminal 5). Additionally, I arrived to discover that my favorite type of British chips have been “made healthy”/ruined by the manufacturer.

It’s been a rough morning.

Let us rewind to yesterday afternoon at O’Hare. After realizing I had packed everything except a notebook to, you know, write, I learned that Hudson News does not sell notebook materials. I went to four, so I’m pretty sure about this. Barbara’s Bookstore, a rather pretentious looking kiosk amidst the Vienna Beef stands and McDonald’s, does however. One marked-up Moleskine notebook later, I was back in business and quite excited. I had finally managed to silence the voices of the Bluth family, who kept repeating in their hilarious cadence, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

I decided one last cheeseburger in America was in order, so I swung by McDonald’s. Then I accidentally ordered the DOUBLE quarter pounder with cheese. Which I didn’t realize until I sat down at the gate and saw there was half a pound of meat in my hand. It was a really disgusting amount of beef – but I ate it all, partly in the hopes that it would induce a food coma for the flight. (No dice, btw.)

I got an upgrade to Economy Plus, which was great, but I still wasn’t allowed to use the lavatory beyond “the curtain”. Now, maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but not since the airplane episode of ‘Seinfeld’ have I seen flight attendants so intensely enforcing the line between steerage and business class. The worst part was that it was a mesh curtain (i.e. see-through) which I considered tantamount to a slap in the face.

So. United still has the worst food ever. And they charge for booze on an international flight. That’s all I’ll say about that. On the plus side though, the video service wasn’t working and everyone on the flight was spared the horror of watching Jennifer Lopez in “The Backup Plan”. As a bonus, United felt so bad about depriving us of this cinematic travesty, we are all getting tokens of appreciation! I’ll be collecting that in the form of 7,000 frequent flier miles.

According to the display board, my gate will open in 45 minutes and I will be two hours away from the Edinburgh Castle, haggis and scotch. I’ve never had haggis before, but I will be eating it tonight. Andrew Zimmern claimed to know of a good place, so I’ll finally find out if that guy knows more than just about eating bugs.