019 - fri 19/05/2005 - london

we stayed up late the previous night watching bad english television - big brother mostly. we slept in and spent most of the day chilling out on the couch, looking up things on the internet, getting our bags in order. we left a note and a small gift for tim and sarah, who had been exceedingly generous in letting us stay with them for the whole week. we wandered out to a nearby pub for dinner, and we ate british pub fare while listening to diana ross's greatest hits.

bags packed, we headed for stansted airport. our flight left at 6am on saturday morning, and the tube doesn't run that early, so our plan was to catch the last train to stansted on friday night and spend the night occupying ourselves and/or sleeping at the airport terminal. when we got to the terminal we were surprised by how many other people had had the same idea as us. i guess we were expecting the terminal to be kind of empty, but basically every uncomfortable chair and every awkward bench was occupied by sleeping familie, travellers, businessmen. the amount of people who had sleeping bags, rubber mats - people had come prepared. we found a patch of the floor that wasn't taken, spread out some clothes and attempted unsuccessfully to doze for a few hours.

click here for one photo from this day of suz next to a sign that says 'shoulder of mutton alley'