london.to.dc.to.boston

Well now...here we are, back in boston. We had a very blog-worthy day monday which i'll go into in a minute. First though, a summing up of london.
I got through saturday in the last entry. On sunday, i went to camden market with the b's. I had read about portobello market which i think was more focused on antique-y type things, but it wasn't open on sundays, so *tm* suggested camden. She was going there herself later in the day. We took the bus, and when we got off, we were on a street with tattoo stores, piercing places, and little tent things with generally inappropriate merchandise. (Remember folks...i was there with three children- 5 years, 2 years, and 9 weeks.) Five and a half year old *g* pointed out the girl with pink and orange hair- i think she was impressed. We marched on none-the-less, and luckily hit another section with really cute stores and a great market area. I got my piece of jewelry (i don't remember if i posted about this before...since we're carrying everything with us, i decided to buy one piece of jewelry from each country we were in. That way i have a souvenir, but don't have to carry anything large and heavy.) -a bracelet this time. *kb* also got a similar one to mine, so now we're bracelet pals. Then we got some lunch before heading back. We were going to go to some cool bar, but since it was sunday, the place closed at 9pm (lame, right?) so we got take-out indian and watched ricky gervais. Monday I took the beatles photo of the b's for their "we moved and have a new baby" announcement. I think i forgot to mention the fact that they live close to the abbey road crosswalk that the beatles made famous years ago. In fact, if any of you have a clever quip to use for their announcement let me know. I'm trying to come up with some ideas for them, but no luck so far. Then I said bye to *ab* and he went to work. The rest of us went to primrose park, and then to harrods. That place is out of control..they have an obscene amount of stuff in there. Then it was time to leave. We called a cab, which was late, so we got to the airport with only 1:45 before our flight took off. We checked our bags with no problems, and then went upstairs to the security line. Ha! The line was a minimum of 1 mile long, wrapping through all the metal turnstiles, and into the hall, up the stairs, around a corner, up some more stairs, through a bridge, and (just before we got there) out into the garage winding up the ramp. I almost threw up. At this point we had 1:30 before our plane was supposed to take off. It turned out that it wouldn't have mattered if we had gotten there 3 hours in advance, because they would just walk the line and pull people out as their departure time approached. The line was really just some place to stand while you waited for your turn. At 3:30, they pulled us up to (not the front but) the beginning of the turnstiles which we then wove through for a while. At 4:10 we finished our pat down- our plane was leaving at 4:20. I broke out in a full run. Luckily, four weeks of carrying a large backpack paid off. My cardiovascular strength didn't fail me. As i rounded a corner, an frazzled looking employee was calling out "925 washington dc?" I showed her my boarding pass, and she exclaimed into her walkie talkie "we have scs!" She told us to get in the little golf cart around the corner, and the driver flew through the airport with the beep, beep, beep going. We peeled into the gate at 4:15, and were seated comfortably while the last family (who'd arrived at the airport 3 hours in advance, but got stuck behind us when they pulled all of us out of the long line and put us in the short line) boarded the plane. Geez louise. The flight to dc wasn't bad. We had our own tv's, and i watched three movies- mission impossible 3, hoot, and another i don't remember. I also watched the ending to davinci code three times since it was the longest of the movies playing, and they didn't reset until the last one was over. We landed at dulles and sat on the airplane for a while. The attendants had mentioned that there was a different arrival procedure thanks to those terrorists, but after 5 minutes, they announced that they were as much in the dark as we were. A few minutes later, the pilot announced that they were ready with the "mobile lounge" and that the delay was caused by the customs agents who must have been "eating a big plate of tacos." Ha! We got off through the rear of the plane, and got onto the mobile lounge (aka big bus that fits an airplane of people) and were driven to another building where we went through customs. We had picked up our bags and then rechecked them through to boston. Our dc to boston flight was short, and we arrived at 11:15pm to be greeted by our families, and a baggage carousel that was rotating with a few lonely bags none of which were ours. Marvelous. We filled out a lost baggage claim and returned home at 5:30am london time. The next day we stayed home waiting for the bag which apparently arrived at logan around 11:18. It came at 10pm. It's a good thing it got lost on the way home, and not the way there! So...that's the end of the trip. Sad, but okay too. I uploaded my pictures, and there were around 1200. I'm currently cutting that down a bit, renaming the files, and then i'll upload them and post a link here, so if any of you are interested, you can check them out.