THE NINE BAG WONDERS

COOLEST THING I SAW TODAY: 

The 'plane mate' at Dulles Airport. There are no steps to get out of the plane - you just walk straight into a bus-type thing, with sofas in it. Then when it's full, the bus thing lowers to the ground and you zoom off to the terminal. When you get to the terminal, the bus connects to the door, and you just walk straight into the immigration-y bit. The plane mates look really space-age, whizzing around the airport.

                                                                                                  The birth of our new life in DC was a sweaty, stressful one and we can but hope that the offspring is less troublesome than the labour taken to bring it into the world. How we managed to get to Heathrow is still something of a mystery, considering that our morning included hitting the Edgware Road to buy a further 3 suitcases (the 5 I'd already packed just weren't enough...), getting thousands of pounds of dollars from the Post Office (fact: you can get up to $10,000 in cash from the Post Office without notice. We obviously didn't, but it's good to know) and cleaning the flat like possessed hygiene maniacs, so as to leave it all nice and shiny for Adrian when he moves in in May. 

                                                                                                       By the law of averages, and based on how little we'd paid for our suitcases, it was only right that one of them should've broken before we left the flat, so once we'd poured ourselves into Heathrow (mercifully not T5), I got that clingfilm wrapped (cooool) to keep it shut, only to discover that we in fact required a NINTH bag, because one of ours was not only over the weight limit, but over the heavy weight limit, too. Ok, now the adventure could begin! All bags stowed, no eyelid batted by the lady behind the desk at the fact that we had an obscene amount of luggage, much of which was set to break the backs of her baggage-handling colleagues, we skipped off into the terminal.

                                                                                                    On closer inspection of our tickets, we realised that we'd been upgraded to 'World Traveller Plus'. I wasn't expecting this to be much different from regular economy - sorry, 'World Traveller' class - but it turned out to be extremely sweet. Big chairs, foot rests, loads of legroom and most speedy drinks and food service. Unfortunately no level of luxury could detract from the noises coming from the loo directly behind our heads, where a man was throwing up before we even took off, but hey.

                                                                                                After our stressful morning, Mum's last words of wisdom to me were to have a soft drink and a sleep once we got on the plane. So I opted for a cocktail and settled down to watch a movie (tangent: BA movies SUCK - there are very few, they aren't very good, they bear no relation to what's on the schedule and you can't pause whenever you like - they're only on at specific times). Within about 20 mins, I was fast asleep and woke up about an hour outside Washington. This could've been because 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story' is awful, but I suspect Mum may've had a point.

                                                                                                     It was super speedy to get to Immigration (thanks, Plane Mate!) and we were feeling very smug that everything had gone so smoothly, that our fortunes had finally taken a turn for the better and that we'd soon be out of the clothes in which we sweatily cleaned the flat this morning. However, US Immigration had other ideas and we hit another hiccup in a particularly hiccupy day - nay, week. The Immigration lady forcibly informed us that we were wrong to think I can travel or stay in the country on Max's visa, so for a minute there, all looked quite bleak. Fortunately I was able to produce my maiden name passport, with an old US working visa still valid for a couple of years, and was allowed in on that, despite my lack of lined up work. Phew!

                                                                                                     By now - in keeping with the hiccupy day, nay week - we were fully expecting only a fraction of our bags to make it onto the carousel, with the clingfilm one either ending up in Peru, or being scattered down the chute in little bits. Miraculously, all NINE bags arrived in tact and, yet more miraculously, the moment we stepped out of the terminal (I say stepped, but of course mean staggered, with loaded trolleys and a desperate look in our eyes), we bagged a huge taxi that sped us to our new life in DC.

                                                                                                     It was dark and rainy and the roads were absolutely deserted, but I figured it'd pick up once we were in town. When we were on what I thought were the outskirts of the city, Max announced that we'd just passed the JFK Centre and that the BBC Bureau was just up the way. It was like a ghost town! Seriously - no cars, no people and no real sense of a built-up metropolis. Max reckoned it might be because it's like the City area of London, which is deserted by night, but bustling by day.

                                                                                                   We were dropped off at a swanky-looking hotel (www.hotelmadera.com), whose swankiness did not translate to helpfulness in the two night concierges, as I struggled to and fro the taxi with our many bags while Maxy wrangled them outside in the rain. But our executive suite is enoooormous and Max and I are clad in leopard print robes that are so gross they're not even good - just gross. The Devos (and their nine bags) have arrived!