Flying Virgin

I'm back from America. Did you miss me? I managed to go pretty much internet free the whole time (2+ weeks!) and clocked up only 9 mins in a hotel internet room (and only because K had some minutes that needed using up).

I'll post some pictures and stories over the next few days.

The itinerary was
1 night at Heathrow (wahay!)
4 nights in New York
4 nights in Montreal
3 nights in Quebec City
3 nights in New York (so good they went there twice)

We took the train from Montreal to Quebec rather than flying and it was by far the nicest, comfiest, journey of the whole trip. A lesson learnt there: planes are shit. Especially flying cattle class across the Atlantic. We went with Virgin Atlantic. Here's my review of them (Economy Class):

Food: Actually quite good. Especially the meatballs on the outwards leg.
Booze: Decent amounts available as long as you can easily wander over to the galley to ask for it. Only a real problem if you have a sleeping person on the end of your row.
Check-in: No problems here other than on the way back we didn't get the seats we thought we'd booked online (we wanted a 2 but got a 3)
Entertainment: Excellent - a wide choice of recent films and tv, also plenty of music to listen to. Take your own headphones though - the ones they give you are crap.
Comfort: Crappy. Except for a couple of seats there's minimal legroom, especially when the arseholes in front put their seat into recline. I swear the only purpose the reclining seats have is to get a bit more space when someone has reclined into you. Sleeping was almost impossible on our overnight flight back home as I just couldn't get comfy at all.

Overall: I'm not too experienced but I suspect that VA are better than average. I reckon the trick is to get slaughtered on free booze so you don't notice that you can't move your legs.

I still don't know what possessed us to fly from Heathrow though.

Nearly time to go...

Holiday to the US and Canada starts tomorrow so today has been a lot of packing and whatnot. I think I have everything we'll need but I figure even if not, they'll have shops there.

From memory, the most important thing to take to America is ID because without that you ain't drinking. I guess you need it to get in the country too, but that feels less important as it only happens occasionally.

I've been saving GBA Final Fantasy VI for this trip as a treat. I wonder if I'll have time to finish it? I think it's quite, quite probable...

Monday Highlights

I've had a fairly uneventful day 1 of my week off. Here are some of the highlights:

1. The annoying woman in Subway put cheese on my sandwich for no sensible reason. Luckily I couldn't really taste it - I had been a bit worried that it might make the whole thing inedible and lead to me being hungry.
2. I watched Saw 3. Definitely not as good as the first one (or the second one either) but still fun in an inventively nasty way. I like the bit with the cows.
3. I finally got around to contacting my local recycling scheme so they can send me a container to put things in.

Bet you wish you were me.

Week Off

I have a week off work, but no significant plans for it. I'm not going away, repainting, touring York or doing any of the other things that can be done in a week. What I think I will do instead is play Final Fantasy XII (not to be confused with Final Fantasy X2, possibly the silliest named game ever). I'll do this on my sofa and I may shower first. I may not. You can do things like that when you don't have to go out.