The one with the awesome beginning

As I already told you, my winter break adventures involved lots of methods of transportation and traveling right from the beginning. I was very fortunate and had no problems making it to Sevilla airport, though I did forget my chorizo y pan sandwich at home, which was very sad. I tried to get some sleep on the flight, but there were two men behind me talking extensively about their jobs in the airline industry, not to mention the lights were absurdly bright. I made it to London Stansted safely, but I had to wait until nearly four in the morning for my transport over to London Heathrow to meet the family. I know it happens, I was doing it after all, but I was very surprised at the number of people sleeping in Stansted for the night.

Despite the drizzling rain and miserable weather (yes, I got to experience typical London weather), I managed to find my bus and sleep an hour or so over to LHR. I was worried I was going to miss my family because the first tram to the correct terminal wasn't until 5:30 and our plane was before seven. Terminal five was huge, and I had no idea how to find the fam with no phones or Internet, so I walked back and forth until I spotted them. It was absolutely fabulous seeing them after so long!! Yay for family coming to Europe to spend Christmas with me :D

We had some issues figuring out how stand-by works with British Airways, but finally we realized you have to enter this obscure door and wait in this lounge for your name to be called. Luckily, our names were called and we headed off to Munich! I slept through most of the flight, waking towards the end to eat the special British breakfast, which was this egg mayo with tomato on a croissant. I don't know if I can say that it was good, but it was an experience!

In Munich, we took a train into the city. I think I have decided that I really like trains. They tend to be comfortable, reasonably fast, and let you see some of the landscape. We arrived at our hotel and struggled between two competing needs: sleep and hunger! In the end hunger won out, and we headed out to find something. In our one true American moment of the trip, we ended up at McDonald's because everyone was too tired and apathetic to make a decision. I am slightly sad to say that we spent the rest of the day sleeping and relaxing in our rooms. I liked what I saw of Munich, but traveling is tiring!!!

Dinner was definitely the highlight of the day. We went to this traditional German restaurant that was fabulous! We started with a German lager and an appetizer of a plate of cold sausage varieties, which were neat to try. For dinner, I had a pork cutlet that was out of this world! It was so juicy and awesome that I definitely felt like a winner. For desert we got an ice cream medley and apple fritters which reminded me of the apple cider doughnuts that they sell at Carter's Mountain in Charlottesville. After, we went back to the hotel to sleep because we had more traveling to do the next day.

My delicious dinner

P.S. For those of you who are wondering, we did finally get paid.  First a payment that included the first two months owed, and then a second payment around the 22nd for December.  Hopefully from this point onward, it will be smooth sailing!