Airplanes, busses and a war ship

Yesterday, or today depending on which time zone we’re referring to, I woke up at 04:30 in the morning to get ready for travelling. At around 5 in the morning me and my mother got in the car and off to the airport we went.

Since we live close to the airport the drive only took about 15 minutes. After chugging a whole energy drink we said our goodbyes and I went to meet up the rest of my class. We checked in our luggage and spent about two hours waiting to board the plane.

The flight to Heathrow went smoothly, most of us slept but I was determined to stay awake. We had to wait at Heathrow for multiple hours, although it wasn’t that much of a bother since it was huge and there were a lot of things to do. To get to our gate we had to go by bus, which of course was filled with people that were uncomfortably close. But isn’t that always part of the airport experience?

After hours of waiting we finally got on our next plane from London to Miami. I spent the flight playing chess against my classmates, watching The Truman Show and listening to music. The small computer sceens on the back of every seat proved to be a great source of entertainment, wherever you turned your head there was a computer screen flashing between different scenes. It looked quite surreal to be honest, almost like some kind of futuristic or science fiction dystopian film. Usually airplane food makes my stomach turn, but during our flight we got stuffed with food that actually wasn’t that bad, it was rather good compared to my earlier experiences. After a while I failed my mission to stay awake. I had a plan to stay awake for as long as I possibly could so that I wouldn’t have to get used to the different time zone the hard way. After sleeping for a while we got served even more food and drinks and I took multiple funny pictures of my classmates sleeping in weird ways. I was then going to get out of my seat for a quick toilet visit but when I was going to grab the seat in front of me for support I accidentally grabbed on to the face of the lady in front of me. It was extremely embarrassing and I couldn’t look her in the eye while passing her for the rest of the flight. Luckily for me we soon got off the plane and onto another bus to reach our baggage claim station.

After we all showed our passports and VISA’s to the passport control we picked up our luggage and then we got on yet another bus which took us to our final destination. Me and my friend slept the whole ride, almost on top of each other in slightly uncomfortable positions which left me with
a sore neck. At two in the morning we arrived in Tampa outside a war ship, turned into a museum, that was in front of T/S Gunilla. We had to carry all of our belongings through the labyrinth of a ship and then we finally could unpack our stuff. After I unpacked most of my things I ran towards the showers. At around 05:30 in American time I went to bed and had the best sleep I’ve had in a while. Surprisingly I always sleep way better here on the ship than I do anywhere else.

Thyra Havås SAB2023