A couple months ago, Air Canada showed up as having among the best fares to London from Nashville, so that’s who we decided to fly with. Their ticket counter and gate attendants were having a bad day on November 22nd when we left town, however. It seems their main computers were down, leaving them to revert to pre-1980’s (pre 70’s?) ways of doing things. That said, I don’t think anyone ever got a boarding pass that said, “Hi! I’m a boarding pass!” on it in decades past.

Hi! Im a boarding pass!

Not long before boarding the big 747 for the flight from Toronto to London, I caught a glimpse of the scene outside. Dusk had brought all the light sources on both sides of the glass into the same range, leaving an interesting layered effect that the camera was actually able to pick up.

The flight itself was uneventful. I’d downloaded a season each of Top Gear and The Boondocks onto my iPod, marking the first time I’ve ever actually watched videos on the thing. Combine that with my Jabra C820s noise-cancelling, full-ear-coverage headphones, and I have to say I was pretty comfortable.

The final leg of the trip was a longish ride on London’s Underground train system. Compared to NYC’s subway and DC’s Metro, the Underground seems to use much smaller cars and tunnels — less headroom for us tall people, but I imagine it makes it cheaper when new tunnels have to be dug.