I Can See Clearly Now

So we’re here!  In the land of my father.  Country at least, if not state.

Overall, the journey wasn’t too bad at all. We really could have done without the delay at Heathrow, especially the time we just sat on the plane on its stand, waiting for clearance to taxi. I’m not sure who was the more nervous, Susie, or myself on her behalf.

I was terribly restrained at Heathrow. I think I only tested two perfumes – and didn’t buy any. In fact, all I bought was a couple of books – and apart from those on my Kindle are the only books I have with me.

I managed to get a window seat on the plane and spent some time gazing out of the window even though it was mainly cloud I could see. The cloud broke a little over Greenland so managed to get a snap of the snow, although not as clear as it could be.

By the time we got to bed it was around 5:30 am to our body clocks, so a pretty long day.  This meant we were up early this morning, 6:00 am Colorado time and down for breakfast by 7:00 am. Breakfast was great.  It’s now lunchtime as I write this and we’re still pretty stuffed. I had the bacon, egg and hash browns with an add on of cinnamon roll french toast with maple syrup.  This was supposed to be just the one slice but as our waiter explained as he delivered it, they had a new chef on who had prepared the full three slices in error so these were “on the house”. We made a valiant effort between us but were beaten by the final slice.

We have now ventured out to collect our rental car. This involved catching the shuttle bus back to the airport, then taking the rental company’s shuttle bus out to their site. We had a bit of a “discussion” about what has or has not been included in our package and will be emailing the travel agent for some clarification. The (literally) small print on our rental voucher came in for close consideration necessitating Susie “my eye sight is perfect” Black fishing out her reading glasses to dissect the details. And then lending said glasses to the guy behind the desk …

The drive back to the hotel was pretty uneventful with Susie in the hot seat and yours truly being the eyes and ears. Which proved their merit as the driver decided to ignore the red lights just because the other guys turning right had a green light!

We’re just having a top up of coffee before tackling the drive into downtown Denver without a sat nav. We have an old fashioned map and downloaded Google maps on the tablet. Of course, little miss “nothing wrong with my eyes” needs the reading glasses to see the paper map, although has decided it’s much easier to read the right way up!

Our most vexing question at the moment is regarding tipping. What Rules do we apply? When, who and how much? This may be a question for Libby and Andrew to come back on.

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