Right on time!
Day 0 – Kyle Wefler made plans to arrive in London a day before the rest of the group to proactively defeat his imminent jet lag. Smart thinking, Kyle! Lucky Kyle lands safely in London and swiftly makes his way to Heathrow’s baggage claim area, only to learn that his checked bag decided to make a solo trip… just not to London.
Day 1 – Another fortuitous series of events! Anda Basho, Anurag Chaudhary, and Kimberly Miranda arrive in beautiful London at 6:30 am local time, an entire hour ahead of schedule. John Duffy makes his way into the city on a separate flight mere minutes later. We soon learn that Deepak Ranganath’s flight is delayed by 3 hours and is now expected to arrive at 9:30 am. And so we wait.
While we wait – COFFEE. An 8-hour overnight flight but hardly an hour of sleep means that the question of whether or not to have caffeine isn’t even an option. $2.80 for a medium-sized mochaccino? Yes, please! …Oh, wait, that’s NOT a dollar sign. Because now we’re in the United Kingdom. And here, £2.80 in pounds is $4.72 in dollars. A far cry from the sweet deal I thought I had gotten! Mochaccino priced at a British pound-sterling premium: 1, sleep-deprived MBA student holding the weaker currency: 0.
Meanwhile, 9:30 gets here before we know it, and we finally locate Deepak after an unsuccessful hour-and-a-half-long search attempt. Each of us exhausted, we purchase Oyster passes for the tube (London’s subway system) and we sit down on the first of two trains that will take us on the 1.5-hour trek to our lodging in central London.
Finally comes the time to transfer to the second train (“Mind the gap!”). A group of five with all ten hands occupied by luggage, we squish our way through the already congested underground madhouse, up and down stairs and escalators, over to the line that will ultimately take us to our stop at Aldgate East; only to learn that the entire line is closed for three days due to the upcoming bank holiday on Monday, May 5th. Fighting our way back down into the subway system, we manage to find an alternative route to our destination and finally emerge from the tube (which is two blocks from our accommodations), about 7 hours after landing.
Once we got settled into our rooms, we explored the area a bit and stumbled upon food truck heaven, just down the street from us. (Watch out, Columbus!) InterXion’s headquarters are also just a ten minute walk for us. We have a busy week lined up and it all begins tomorrow on Day 2 at a sushi restaurant for lunch with InterXion’s CEO of the London division. Coming up later this week, we’ll be meeting with the Directors of Operations, Finance, Sales, and HR. As for tonight, the plan is to catch up on SLEEP!
Till tomorrow!
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