First day of travel
March 9-10th, 2023
Indianapolis to JFK and JFK to Heathrow
My travel buddy for this whole trip was Bryce. We met during one of our first classes our first year at IUPUI and have been friends since. I am so glad I got to travel with one of my good friends! It was also really nice to have someone I was already friends and familiar with to travel with – it made all the stressful moments so much easier. One thing about Bryce is that he is very detail oriented just like I am, so all the major travel details were ironed out before we actually left and those pieces were so much less stressful than they could have been.
To start our trip, Bryce and I were dropped off at the airport a few hours before our flight. All went smoothly here; security was quick and easy and the flight to JFK was fine. I sat beside Bryce on the way to JFK but not during the longer flight from JFK to London. When we arrived at JFK, we had a three-and-a-half-hour layover. I was anxious in Indianapolis: anxious to start the trip and generally anxious for the flight and airport things. Because of that, I didn’t eat much in the morning or at the Indianapolis airport (nervous stomach) so by the time we got to JFK I was absolutely starving. I wandered around our terminal looking for something to eat and eventually I settled on a very mediocre but massively expensive sandwich. There wasn’t very much to choose from in our terminal and I wasn’t willing to take the train to another further terminal by myself and also with only a couple hours until we were supposed to board. In all honesty, I definitely could have made that trip and back in time but my anxious, beginner level traveler brain told me “Absolutely not.” With that being said, I will never again purchase a subpar, $16 Italian sandwich from an airport again; instead, I will always make sure to eat something and pack snacks. Silly mistake but lesson learned!
The flight to London was about 7 hours, which was the longest flight I have ever been on. Honestly, I was not a fan of the flight there. I luckily got the aisle seat, which is better than the middle seat, but I had to fit my backpack underneath the seat in front of me and I packed a good amount in my backpack, so I left little to no leg room for myself on the flight there. My legs were cramped and I couldn’t really get comfy on the plane, so I only slept for about an hour total. The meals on the plane were totally fine, not as bad as I had expected or was told, so that was a nice surprise. When we got to Heathrow around 6:30 am (London time), Bryce and I had such a smooth transition through border and customs. It felt easy … too easy. I was suspicious that we missed someone or something, but we didn’t and Heathrow just has a very efficient, streamlined process. We eventually made our way to the tube station at the airport, bought our tickets to Hammersmith, which was where our first hotel was, and hopped on the train. Very smooth transition from the plane to navigating the airport and the tube stations.
We arrived in Hammersmith and checked our bags into our hotel. We had train tickets to Oxford around 11 am so we took the tube to Paddington Station, the station where our train to Oxford left from. We were both pretty dead from the traveling and lack of sleep, so our first stop was a coffee shop called Black Sheep. I had an Americano and it was so strong and so tasty, just what I needed to wake up a bit for our trip to Oxford.
Oxford
Oxford was such a great experience! It was so pretty and had such beautiful, historical architecture. Bryce and I met up with a couple of girls from our study abroad group, which was nice to get to know a couple more people before the official study abroad programming began. Our trip to Oxford and the two extra girls definitely helped keep me and Bryce awake and fight the jetlag, so as fun as the trip was I also think it was necessary for us.
The four of us got Lebanese food for lunch – SO delicious. We also walked around Oxford Prison and Castle and saw the location of the last public execution held there, which was really interesting to see. We also went to Alice’s Shop, a tiny little storefront selling all things Alice in Wonderland; I got a couple of cute postcards from the store as souvenirs. Aside from those two specific locations, we really just kind of walked around and explored, going into whatever shops we felt like and just soaking in all the cool buildings and atmosphere.
In total, me and Bryce were awake for over 30 hours running off of 1 hour of sleep from the plane, so it’s safe to say we were absolutely exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel. We got takeout for dinner, showered, and went to bed.
