I was already feeling the pain that comes with lack of sleep when my flight touched down at London Heathrow airport. It’s hard to keep straight the number of hours involved in a transcontinental flight when considering the time change.

It becomes a complicated mathematical equation when your brain wants to shut off and sleep. I kept trying to figure out how long it had been since I last slept: Left O’Hare at 8:30 pm plus 7.5 hour. Flight landed in London at 10 am which makes the time in Chicago to be 4 am which means I’ve been awake for… guh. It hurt my brain too much to figure it out. Afterwards I realized that when I landed, I had been awake for nearly 24 hours.

Luckily, the Terminal 5 nightmares that caused British Air to cancel my flight THREE times last week was completely bypassed on arrival. I was arriving and flying out of terminal 4 which also meant that my checked suitcase was going directly from my Chicago flight to my Tel Aviv flight. Most importantly, this meant that I didn’t have to worry about it during my 12 hour layover there.

I found my way to customs which was relatively painless considering the nightmares I had heard about long lines at Heathrow (especially considering that it was a Saturday morning). The customs officer asked how long I would be in England to which I replied, “Oh… maybe 5 or 6 hours”. She looked at me a bit strange but then realized I was only there on a layover. She stamped my passport with an arrival and departure stamp which saved me the effort of getting it stamped again upon my exit.

I paid to have my guitar and laptop backpack checked in at the airport. I didn’t want to lug all of my carry-on bags around London. Once I did that, I felt much lighter which in turn made me feel more awake.

Onwards to the “underground”!

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