Altogether I must say I had a phenomenal trip. In the span of 4 days I got to see tons of friends and family and also take in a lot of sights. I went to Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, visited with friends and 4 members of my family..I packed so much into the time I was there- I slept only the first night I was there...the other 3 nights I slept for no more than 3 or 4 hours apiece!
But getting to London wasn't easy. My connecting flight went through Philly right as they were bracing for a major snowstorm. An oxygen leak in the plane caused issues and after a 5 hour delay we finally took off right before the snow became unmanageable. Once the plane arrived at Heathrow there was another hour long delay as the luggage doors had become iced shut. I made the rookie mistake of hitting up the Bureau de Change where my $40 got me a whopping £19, but I had to get change for the payphone so I could let my cousin know what the delay was.
On the tech front I was very happy with my choices. On my flight from Dallas to Philadelphia I watched The Town which I had downloaded from the android Blockbuster app before I started my trip.
The wifi at my cousin's apartment was fast, but not without its shortcomings. First of all, every time my device disconnected or went to sleep, I had to re-key the security codes in the browser. Secondly, and most annoyingly, I couldn't get emails to send, or my Slingplayer to work. In fact, it wasn't until I spent a night at a friend's home in Reading that I realized that the issue was specific to the single wifi connection rather than an international issue.
One of the setups I was most happy about was the pre-paid sim card in my Droid Pro. I carried only my DP around and used it to take all my photos, used my offline Tube map, read cached NewsRob articles while on the Tube, and made and received calls as if I were back home. I already had everyone's phone numbers in my DP so I didn't have to re-key them into a feature phone as I'd usually have to.
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