Our flight to London on Virgin Atlantic was lovely. At JFK there was a long line to get through security and I amused myself by texting back and forth with our friend, Jane, who happened to send a text while we were waiting. Each time my phone beeped because of the incoming text, the woman in front of me would turn around and give me the stink-eye. She looked like she was having to hold herself back from throttling me when I read one of the texts aloud to Mary. There came a point where the line broke up into two and I chose the longer line because she chose the other line and I could actually empathize with her hatred of me. She’ll most likely never know the sacrifice I made for her.
Our seats were in Premium Economy and they were the first two seats when we got on the plane. We had no one in front of us to lean back into us and we had TONS of leg room. In fact, we had probably a 100 square foot area all to ourselves for most of the flight. We could have done yoga or pilates on the floor if we wanted to. They offered us champagne or orange juice when we boarded and then later brought hot towels and dinner and, after dinner, brought around brandy and something that was like Bailey’s but fruity. I chose the latter and it was delicious. We also received amenity kits with a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, a pen, earplugs, and an eyemask. After dinner I watched “Finding Vivian Maier” on the inflight video system and then, when my eyes started to close on me I put on the eyemask and managed to sleep until I was woken up by the delivery of breakfast – scrambled eggs, potatoes, English bacon and a blueberry muffin. Soon we were at Heathrow and though First Class was supposed to debark first, the flight attendants said they would let us off first. They weren’t able to accomplish that, as the First Class passengers came pushing through, but we ducked out in the middle of that group so were off the plane very quickly. Everyone ran to get to customs like they were running for their lives. Of course I took part in this madness, though Mary kept saying, “Slow down, we’ll get there.” Even with my Keeping Up With Jones’s racewalking, it took us 30 minutes or so to get through immigration. Then we met our driver from Blackberry Car Service, which I had booked online before we left Portland. He was a very sweet guy and drove us from Heathrow to the Sofitel Hotel at Gatwick.
