Arrived safely and tiredly

I am now in Baltimore.

We actually pushed back early at Heathrow and had a minimal taxi rather than the usual 15 minutes of touring the taxiways, and took off without having to wait in a queue.  The flight had brief moments of light turbulence, but nothing was spilled.  Unusually for me, I was able to sleep for a bit during the journey, which was useful, as I only got about 3 hours sleep last night.

The flight went better than expected and time was made up so we actually arrived on schedule in the end.  There was a short queue for immigration, but once it was my turn, it was very quick (presumably as I'm already on file!) and then ignoring the baggage reclaim, straight to a massively long queue for customs, which had just one guy taking all the forms.  I'm not sure why this should be such a long queue, given that all you do is walk up and give him the blue form and carry on.

Within 45 minutes of touching down, I was on the Washington Flyer to the metro, added some credit to my smartcard and off we went.  It's a lot easier without tons of baggage, and also a lot easier if you know what you are doing and where you are going!

I had to wait until 3.25 for my train at Union Station, so a couple of hours to wait.  It's a common stereotype that the British like to queue and others don't.  If you believe in that stereotype, drop in to Washington's Union Station or New York Penn Station and observe the Amtrak departure areas.  About 30 minutes before boarding started, people started lining up and the queue went out the waiting area, and right down the length of the station concourse.  I sat and waited instead and during boarding, just went through alongside people who had lined up.

 The train ride was through forests, in the main, so not an awful lot to see.  I arrived at Baltimore Penn Station and went down to the light rail, missing the ticket machine for pass validation, but fortunately, the ticket inspector was on the platform and before I got on, asked him if my ticket was valid (it wasn't) and he said he'd help me make it valid when I got off (which he did).

It's really hot and humid here.  Even when I went out to dinner at 6.30pm, it was 32C/90F, with my phone telling me that it "felt like 96F".  It's going to be like that here this week, so I'll be looking for museums and other indoor attractions this time, although I'm looking to take it easy today after sleeping 11 hours last night.