London,
England,
United Kingdom
Monday, May 19, 2008
So at long last the trip began! We arrived at Heathrow last night, just after midnight, to drop off the car at the "24 hour" returns office. We caught the last shuttle bus to the terminal with seconds to spare. Although it's 24 hour return, it's not 24 hour shuttle bus service, work that one out. Well we soon did. You have this idea that Heathrow is a 24 hour non-stop International Airport. Wrong! We arrived at an almost deserted Terminal 1, with no access through security, the self-service check-in desks closed and only one (well actually part of one) coffee shop open. Luckily the scales on the luggage belts were still switched on, so our first job was to weigh, un-pack, re-pack, re-weigh, un-pack, re-pack, re-weigh.................our luggage until we (sort of) complied with the luggage allowances. (A big coat is an excellent thing to hide a laptop under while you check-in your bags!) Satisfied that we could wing our way through check-in when the desks eventually opened, we retired to the coffee shop, pulled a few chairs together and did anything other than sleep, thanks to the bright lighting and loud music. Somewhere during these hours of boredom, we ascertained that the check-in desks opened at 5am. Our flight was due to depart at 6.40am and we were told to check-in 3 hours before!
Red-eyed, frustrated and incredibly bored, we finally checked in our 72 kgs of hold luggage, 12 kgs (officially) of hand luggage (actually closer to 16 kgs!) and boarded and departed roughly on time.
