Day 2 Heathrow to San Francisco

  London, England, United Kingdom
Saturday, May 17, 2008

Woke up at 4am and dozed till about 7am. The beds in the Yotel are a bit hard and pillows very low. Having someone nearby flushing the toilet every 15 seconds for 10 minutes at 4am didn't make for a restful sleep. The nature of the Yotel means it can get noisy as other people come and go so if you are a light sleeper then earplugs may be needed. Shower time meant a logistical movement of cases (as you store your cases in the shower when you first go in so you have room to move). The Gatwick Heathrow has a problem as the partition between the toilet and the cabin was a huge glass CLEAR door. They got round this in Heathrow by installing a shower curtain so you cannot see in, unfortunately this now means that though you cannot now see what ablutions are going on in there, you can hear! Oh dear.
 
By 0745 we were off out to seek the bus round to T5. The connections between T4 and T5 are not very good. If you want to take the train from T4 to T5 you need to go via T1/2/3 and then switch from Underground to Express, a bit of a plavarver. However, I would suggest to anyone it is a palarver worth taking, for as soon as we left T4 we were in a traffic jam for 15 mins with a queue of people trying to get into T4. It took 35 mins round to T5. Note for anyone else - get the train even though it doubles back on yourself by going to T1/2/3 first, its will be quicker.
 
Is palarver a Highland word? I'm not sure, it means a nuisance :)
 
I forgot to mention about on the bust last night to T4. We were 20 minutes on the bus before we actually heard anyone speak English. Polish, Spanish, Urdu, all well before we heard anything like a London accent. We keep hearing how the UK is multi cultural but they forget that this is only in the major cities and us hicks still find this unusual.
 

Heathrow T5

T5 is a huge impressive glass/metal greenhouse and man are there a lot of moving stairs. Arrivals are on the ground floor with Departures on the fourth, with THREE levels of car park in between. The whole terminal is British Airways only. Up at departures the emphasis is on self check in. They almost expect everyone to have checked in online, otherwise you have to check in at a machine and then go and drop your bags off.
 
From arriving in T5 to through security was about 15 mins, it was very good. I picked up Dollars which I had pre-booked online with Travelex. Always worth doing as the exchange rate the offer at the airport is pants.
 
We had a tootle through the shops airside, Gordon Ramsay has a restaurant there called Plane Food, they were serving breakfast, "standard" British Fry Up was £16 which is the same as the hotels charge you, they also did a Champagne Breakfast for £21. However, we headed to make use of the BA Lounge. Did I forget to mention we were flying Business Class? In Duty Free it was two litres of Morgans Spice for £15, so that's supplies for an evening sorted for the next couple of weeks.
 

Wine in BA Lounge

There are two main sets of BA lounges; we went to the South one. It's a bit confusing as to which one to go into. They have the Concord Lounge - which the First Class people use; The First Lounge, which the Gold card people use (why call it First??); and the Galleries Lounge (for Business or Silver card holders). They have an Elemis Spa by the lounge so Catriona went and booked a 20 min slot for a facial and a shoulder massage which she said was very invigorating.
 
The Business lounge is large and split into areas for work, rest, eat, watch TV, read etc. Dozens of PCs for Internet access. They also have free Wifi from BT Openzone. If you find yourself in Heathrow looking for free Wifi just park yourself outside one of their lounges and use theirs. It wasn't that busy luckily. I sampled a few bacon rolls n frothy coffee while Catriona went off back out to peruse the Duty Free shops for bits n pieces.
 
Used the Wifi to check emails and upload the blog. When Catriona came back, we ordered glasses of Champagne (they only leave the Champers out in the First Lounge, in Business you have to ask) - start as we mean to go on.
 

LOTS of escalators

45 mins before take off, time to make a move for the gate. Our flight was from T5B which is a shuttle train ride across the taxiways from T5, its an automated shuttle train like they have between North and South terminal in Gatwick. More escalators way down and way up at the other side.
 
The plane started boarding at 1100, there were a few screaming beasts in the line, one in particular ahead of us was not happy with ANYTHING. Threats by his parents to leave him behind only made him worse. All parents should carry a roll of Duct Tape for such little darlings.
 

A Jumbo, can you see me upstairs?

And then we were on the plane, a Jumbo (747-400) - turn right and up the stairs. The last perk of my now expired BA Silver card was to be able to pick seats upstairs on the plane for both legs of the flight when I bought it.
 
We had the seats on the left hand side by the Emergency exit. Each was about the same space as 3 Ecomomy seats and converted into a fully flat bed. Catriona had a bother with her seat and it took 20 mins after we took off to persuade her video screen to work. We got a glass of champagne before take off plus four more each before lunch was served, the best way to fly - pished!
 

Moving map showing us passing Skye

Lunch was served as we were flying over our house. Well to the west of our house, the plane routed from just north of Glasgow, up the west side of Skye, over the top of North Uist and on towards south of Iceland to Greenland.

Passing over Uist

It was too cloudy from 36,000 feet to see Skye but a good view of the beaches on Uist and great view of St. Kilda and the islands round about.

Passing over St Kilda

 

Dinner!

Lunch was Shetland cold-smoked trout, seared scallop and King Prawn. I had the roast crown of chicken and Catriona had beef and onion Guinness casserole. Followed by chocolate and date torte washed down with, oh yes, another glass of champagne (don't want to mix drinks...)
 

Catriona

I settled and watched The Golden Compass while Catriona chose the retro The Commitments. Afterwards, another glass of Champers and Catriona went for a wee snooze while I updated the blog. I have a look at the Moving Map which told us we had passed the tip of Greenland and was en route for Canada over the Davies Strait.

Ray

 

More updating of the blog. Am I writing too much? It's OK, I'll soon get bored with it :)
 
I had a look round the AVOD (Audio Video on Demand), there was a plethora of movies, tv series, CDs and even Audio books as well as games to play. I thought though it was time for a nap as I have to try and get my body clock into 8 hours earlier as soon as possible. Got a wee rest but little sleep.
 
On the way over the border with Canada I dug out the TomTom and gave it a go. It picked up the satellites OK and said we were traveling at 615MPH! Good going.
 
Afternoon tea (even though our bodies said it was 11pm) was sandwiches and coffee an hour before landing. The skies were clear and we got some great views of the Rockies, various other mountains, the salt flats all round Salt Lake City and general American geography.
 
As we were coming in towards San Francisco from the North we got this superb view of the Bay with fog rolling in right down over the |Golden Gate Bridge and into the bay, it was real weird when all around was blazing sunshine. You could just make out the tops of the Bridge towers. Passed down Alcatraz Island - it's a lot bigger than I thought - and swept down and landed at San Francisco.
 
As the clocks are now 8 hour back, I'll continue this 32 hour day on the next entry!