My final days in London were a whirlwind of changes. The original day I was supposed to come home to Florida was April 18th, I came home exactly one month before on March 18th. I found out on March 13rd that I would have to come home but my mom and sister had a trip planned to come see me and they were landing on the 14th in London. I emailed Mary Robinson to check with her that it was ok that they still come and see me, and we still travel around. We were supposed to travel to Ireland and Scotland, but we were worried that with the travel restrictions we would not be able to get home if we left the country, so we decided to stay in London. We had to change all of our flights, but we were just going to spend the weekend in London doing as much as we could, and everything that I had missed/hadn’t done yet while I was studying abroad. The original flight home was on March 22nd, but the flight got canceled and we ended up coming back on the 18th.
In my final few days in London, we went to the zoo, Camden market, shopping at Primark, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Harrods, the Westminster area to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and time ride the London Eye. We also ate at a ton of different restaurants to fit as much as we could into a very short around if time.
We left London on the morning of the 18th from a very empty Gatwick Airport. On the flight, there were max 50 people including flight attendants and pilots. When we got on the plane my mom handed my sister and I Lysol wipes to wipe down all of the seats and the flight attendant announced that the flight would be operating a little differently than normal with the safety measures in place. When we landed in Miami, they were only letting people off the plane 15 at a time. They gave us a paper to fill out asking three questions. Have you had a cough, have you had a fever, have you had shortness of breath? When we exited, we walked to a little room where there were agents waiting to ask us those questions once again. There was a box on the paper that asked for our temperature, but the agents didn’t take it. The process seemed ridiculous and very unsafe, but I’m not surprised due to our country and how we have been dealing with this whole thing.
Because we had to land in Miami, and I live just south of Orlando we had to stay the night in Miami and drive up the next day. The entire process was crazy and stressful, and it sucked a lot to even be leaving London at all, but it sucked, even more, to leave so much earlier than I expected to.