Kellie and I were up in Oxford early as usual, but there was no particular hurry. Our flight from London Heathrow was at 2:10 PM, and the bus to Heathrow left Oxford at 11:30, supposedly getting to Heathrow at 1:00. Right across Branbury Road from our hotel was a place called Gail's Bakery that made all kinds of breakfast breads, rolls, and pastries, so we got some breakfast of--I don't remember what--and sat at the tables of an open-air café that was closed to eat our pastry and drink our coffee. Realizing that we had hours to wait before our scheduled bus time, we decided that it might be best to see if our tickets were good for an earlier bus, so we took a taxi to the bus station. Sure enough, our tickets allowed us to ride any bus from Oxford to Heathrow. Good thing too! As I will explain in a moment.
The bus that we rode was very similar to any Greyhound-type coach, and the bus drove down the equivalent of a mid-western interstate. I did not see much on the 76 mile trip from Oxford to Heathrow that could not be seen driving from Memphis to St. Louis on I-55. It was pretty plain. We were very lucky that we had taken the earlier bus ride because we arrived at the airport at noon with two hours until our flight, and we used almost every minute of it. We had to exchange our British money back for American money, we had to go through passport lines that were as long as the lines for a roller coaster at Six Flags, and we needed to get something to eat. And all of this, while carrying our 25 pound backpacks around for two or three miles. I checked my phone on my step-counter. I walked 4.58 miles that day while riding a taxi three miles to the bus station, a bus 76 miles to the airport, and spent 8 hours on two planes. I don't remember what I had to eat, but I do remember that the sandwich was like chewing a piece of shoe leather.
Our plane left on time, and a flight from London to Chicago that was supposed to take 7 hours and 45 minutes ended up taking less than seven hours. It was good thing too because we arrived at Terminal 5 in O'Hare, went through Customs and had to take a subway ride to Terminal 3 where we had to go through Customs one more time. I believe we only had about an hour wait for the Chicago to Springfield flight. Had our other flight been on time, we would have been pushing it to catch the flight to Springfield.
The only pictures that I took this day were pictures of the sun setting. This first one is of the sun setting on the Missouri River. The river is the orange "S" shape that seems to be flowing from the sun and into a lake. There was no lake there. The river simply blurs into the orange clouds.
The next picture was taken only a few seconds later, but the plane had banked to the right so that I had more of downward angle. The Missouri River is now an orange streak in the middle of the picture.
And, finally for today, I took this shot of the sunset as the pilot said, "We are about to being our descent into Springfield. Please observe the seatbelt sign, etc."
Tomorrow, I will write about some of my personal "Do's" and "Don'ts" on a trip to Great Britain if you would be interested. That will conclude this travelogue. Enjoy!
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