Portland to Chicago to London to Dover to sea

July23 3:45pm – Life in the fast lane (500pmh+ at 40,000ft)
The flight attendants have made their rounds, five times so far. (1) Do you want to buy a snack pack - $5; (2) pretzel and soft drink service – free; (3) pick up the trash; (4) Do you want coffee – free; (5) Do you want water. Makes it hard to get up and use the restroom because of the carts going back and forth. With the limited space in Economy class, I've learned to be flexible - after all it's my vacation and for every problem there's a silver lining. I'm also running on fumes after 4 ½ hours sleep. I am tempted to ask for a catheter, but wisely stay quiet. I eventually am able to safely use the facilities. I was pretty wiped out when we got our pretzels – I opened the package and started to pour them into my glass of ice. Then as I'm wearing my Bose noise-cancelling headphone, I barely hear the flight attendant apologizing for reaching while she is pouring coffee to the gentleman in the row behind me, saying something about “Purple Tunnel Syndrome.” I'm wide awake now because I certainly don't want to catch that. I glance out the window and take a picture of the Rocky Mountains.
July 23 9:30pm – Chicago O'Hare Airport
We arrive about 20 minutes late, so our pilot took us on a grand tour of the airport (on the ground) by making two loops around the terminal while we wait for our gate to open up. We did not set any speed records and still made our connection to London. So the next flight will also be about 20 minutes late. They are trying to catch up, but a lot of economy passengers do not have seat assignments and the computers are down. Isn't this fun? Flight time to London ~7hr25min.
July 24 11:30am – London and Dover
Since we were late taking off from Chicago, we're naturally late arriving at London Heathrow and that means we're out of sync with landing priority. So, like Chicago, we take some scenic loops – this time at 15,000 feet. On one loop, I glanced out the window to see an A320 passingVERY close underneath us. How exciting to be nearly hit mid-air by an another plane. An obvious error somewhere. Upon leaving the plane I asked the captain how close we were. He answered matter-of-factly about 1000 feet. Do you really want to know how big Heathrow is? The highest gate number I saw was #209. And they're building a fifth terminal!
After a quiet trip through customs, we find our cruise representative, but we're not on her list. After a couple of minutes, she determines that we were expected on a Northwest flight arriving in Terminal 4 (we were on a United flight arriving in Terminal 1). So the driver came from Terminal 4, picked us up and took us back to Terminal 4 to collect the other four. The off to Dover. About 40 miles from Dover the main freeway (Motorway 40) is stop and go. The driver talks to a trucker and is informed that an accident 1/2 hour earlier has completely blocked the road. We all have a good laugh at the sign telling us to slow down because of an accident. A turtle is going faster than us at this time. Finally after about 30 minutes of stop and go, we find an exit leading to the alternate route (scenic route). Here's one of those memorable silver linings – we passed through this tiny village with buildings dating from the 15th century (half timber construction). The countryside was so quiet and peaceful and so very British. And we finally get to Dover. Clear and about 75 degrees.
All we want to do now is shower and change clothes. We're both feeling pretty skanky, but it was time for the lifeboat drill. When that concluded, our luggage had been delivered to our stateroom and we hurried to shower and change for a great relaxing dinner. We knew the Maitr'd from our previous cruises and well as the head waiter and one of the table waiters. We even had a few minutes to talk to the head waiter.
Dinner tonight was: mushroom tort, crab soup, sea bass with spinach and mashed potatoes, a glass of wine, and an assortment of chocolate thingies for dessert. Maybe that doesn't sound too special, but it was a far cry better than anything else I've eaten since our last cruise. It was impeccably prepared and presented – absolutely perfect.
It's now 11:00pm local time and we go into another time zone tomorrow. We're looking forward to a great night's sleep and we cruise the North Sea. We'll be at sea all day tomorrow.