Well last night at 3am I'm awakened with a phone call in the hotel room... A man with a thick accent and groggy mind do not go well together. I think I'm still in France and I keeping answering "oui, oui"... They're asking about Amy and I think its 3am.. Surely she's here long before now, her flight was due in an 10pm. They're asking if she's in my room - no, she's in the other room, with Patricia... With Patti...I honestly struggle to think of Patti's last name. Whoa. K-U-D-R-N-A.. Ok. So I go over to their room to see how she is and what happened.
Unbelievable journey that I will sum up here - she lands at 10 - but then in going through the line to check passports there are only two agents and hundreds of passengers. One guy is having an issue, and is with the agent for over 30 minutes, and in the meantime the other agent checks 20 people. She finally gets through, TWO HOURS later - she takes the express to the Liverpool street station - and she learns, no more tubes run after 12... No trains?! It took us a good 45min to get across town WITH the tube in service. Her option is cab (50pounds), or bus.. After bus.. She opts for bus and its packed like its rush hour - she befriends some other weary travelers in the same situation and together they find their way through the bus system. On the last bus the driver says he'll let them know when its their stop (she and her new friend Felix are at hotels just a block apart)... The driver does not tell them - but another couple getting off mentions Hounslow - which is what they want. They've passed the stop - ergh. So they share a cab to their hotels - the cabbie is very nice, helps Amy get in the hotel (the desk clerk was very reluctant to open the doors at 3am)... And the cabbie insists that she take his card, in case of emergency. But she won't need it - we just have a short tube ride to Heathrow tmw.... Famous last words.
So this morning, after Amy's nap, we have our English breakfast to sustain us for the day of travel HOME. And we head out. We need to be at the airport 3 hours early, so that means 9am. We get to the tube stop about 2 blocks away, and I had issue with my oyster card (it charged me twice) - so I needed to resolve that so I would have enough to get to Heathrow. He fixes the problem - and then tells me that there are no trains to Heathrow this morning. WHAT??? You're going to have to back up and say that again. You just heard me tell you I needed enough for Heathrow, you go through the process of fixing it and *then* you tell me no trains? There's been a power outage. The *only* reason we stayed here was because it was near a tube station and only 2 stops away from the airport. It was going to be so easy.
So how do we get to Heathrow? Oh, take the 203 bus, which is "this way" in some non-descript non-directions... So we walk, and 5 blocks down (past our hotel in the opposite direction) and keep asking along the way for the 203.
We find it - and literally, I could reach out and touch the back end of it as it pulled away. The next one comes in 20minutes. Its 9:00.
Amy still has the card from her driver last night, so we call there - it will be 12 pounds and they don't take cards. We don't have 12 pounds. We collectively scrape together all of our change and using 5 and 10 pence pieces, we find 12 pounds. We call him back and they'll be here in 5 minutes.... 5 minutes later we get a call. He asked, where are you exactly? We're at the bus stop. Still. At the bus stop. Its 9:25. We hear a honk and he's in a parking lot across the way.
We had considered taking the bus if it came first - but it doesn't stop at terminal 4 for international flights, so in addition to however many stops it made along the route, we'd then have to figure in the time it took us to find and traverse to terminal 4.
Its all good - all part of our grand adventure. What fun would it be if things went smoothly? As long as we make our flight - all is well. And besides, we hadn't had the chance to ride in a car on the wrong side of the street yet - and now we can check that off of our list.
We're at the airport - checked in - and just waiting to board. Hoping for a boring, uneventful rest of the day.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
