I guess we’ve got a little case of revenge traveling this year. This is the now the third time I’ve been out of the country in 2023. We booked the trip about two months ago. We decided it would be nice to go to a bigger city for Christmas, and JetBlue is now flying to London, and I had a credit to use up, so the tickets were a steal.
Speaking of JetBlue, our flight over had maybe fifty people on it – everyone in coach got their own row once we took off. (That was not to be repeated on the flight home.) It was very nice doing a direct flight this time. The price was good when we went to Paris, but flying through Iceland really puts a damper on that first day – it’s a long flight with the stop.
Naturally, we stocked up on food and tea (my personal haul is above). I got my fix at the Loop yarn store, and Liberty for fabric (and Christmas ornaments.) Through truly herculean efforts, I managed to come home with only box of Christmas cards. Their full prices are so good! I’m very glad most of them are the square cards we have to pay extra to send.
Our first day’s forced march was up to Islington for the stop at Loop, as well as an Ottolenghi deli. We’ve meaning to stop at one of those for years, and the Islington branch is the original. What a great late lunch/early dinner that was. They were doing only cold food, so we got a fantastic salad assortment, and then finished off with pastries. If we had been near any of the other branches, we totally would have gone back for more – I can’t say enough about how good that meal was.
The trip was great, but we managed to bring back one souvenir of note – a lovely head cold that manifested on the flight back. We’re still both getting over it. It definitely seems to be a cold (not Covid, at least), and the cough has been charming. For extra fun, we lost power on Monday while still sick, and had to take PTO since neither of us was willing to go into the office. (That storm was crazy – we were very lucky and were only out for slightly less than 24 hours, and that first night was warm. It got colder within the next two days, and there are still a few people without power.)