Getting there is half the fun
We were scheduled to leave Dulles at 7:00 PM on Thursday and arrive at Heathrow at 7:00 AM on Friday, then catch a flight to Leeds, to be met by a van and driven to York, rested and ready for lunch.
We arrived at Dulles more than two hours early, as requested. The kids were very excited, and a little ragged from missing their naps. We boarded the plane at 6:00, just as they were running out of patience at the gate. We took our seats at the bulkhead in Steerage class, right behind Snooty class. As we settled in, it started to rain.
After three months of drought, a thunderstorm closed Dulles long enough to create a long queue for takeoffs. The Virgin Atlantic cabin crew was sharp and served drinks and commiserated with us. The kids got a kick out of the personal video screens for a while. After about three hours on the ground, the Captain informed us that the flight had been re-routed, and that we would need to take on more fuel before leaving. An hour later, we left the gate.
Little Brother was asleep before the wheels were up, but Big Sister was awake for much of the flight (as were we, of course.) We knew we would miss our connection at Heathrow, so Virgin re-booked us. However, the trek and bus ride between terminals and security check and passport control doomed our shot at that flight, so we waited another two hours for the next flight to Leeds. That flight was only 40 minutes or so and the service seemed almost quaint--cocktails mixed from real bottles into real glasses, etc. Or maybe we were just completely punchy. The Leeds airport is sort of like a poorly-run Greyhound Bus station, and we had to hang around in it for some time while the British Midlands staff took down the information about our missing luggage (one of the huge double-hernia bags was absent.) Then things started to look up as we were greeted by a very pleasant woman who escorted us to our mini-bus and took us the 40 minutes or so to York. The bus went by the backroads, so we saw a lot of pretty countryside. Our guide gave us some local history and didn't seem to mind that the kids needed an exorcist. When we arrived in York, it was about 4:30 on Friday afternoon, or about 11:30 Friday morning in Virginia. We had been awake for almost 30 hours, which at the time seemed like a bit much.
We unpacked a little and then took a walk into town, only a few blocks away, and visited the Minster and some old ruins and a very nice park and garden. The missing bag was delivered the next day. The weather has been extremely nice: sunny, clear and warm. So now we like it here.