Part of the fun of an African vacation is getting there. From the West Coast of the US, you’ve got to really want it — you’ll be flying for at least 24 hours just to touch foot in South Africa, not including layover time. From there, you might have to take one or two connecting flights in addition to time on the road before you’ve reached your destination. Once we started to peruse 40+ hour itineraries, we were emboldened to take a nice, long block of vacation. If you’ve got to burn at least 2 days on both ends of your trip, why not just take a month off?

We chose the San Francisco - London - Johannesburg route on Virgin Atlantic because both flights were direct and avoided a layover somewhere in the US. And also because of Virgin’s seat-back entertainment systems.

First up: we took a 12-hour red-eye from San Francisco and arrived in London’s Heathrow at 10:30 am. We had an eight hour layover, so we hopped on the Tube to meet our friends Sarah and Dave at Piccadilly Circus. Somehow we missed the forecast for rain — rain in London? madness! — so we got drenched. We had a lovely lunch at Tiger Tiger catching up with both of them. Sarah had to go back to work, so Dave kept us awake and moving with a walk to Trafalgar Square and some time in the National Portrait Gallery. Just before rush hour we got back on the Tube and trekked back to Heathrow for another red eye flight to Jo’burg.

No photos for this leg. I did try to take a few pictures of the architecture of the National Portrait Gallery, ignorant of the rules. I’m happy to report that even a stern verbal warning sounds better in a British accent.

Next up: Johannesburg, the City of Gold. And car-jackings. And caustic smog. Fun!