Hello!
Lovely dinner at Rolleston
Manor on Thursday night – I had the fillet steak with béarnaise sauce, and
it arrived perfectly cooked (rare!) with veggies. Robert had seared and roasted lamb cutlets
that he said were really good. Unfortunately, no room left over for dessert,
but that’s how it goes! The wind from Storm Doris continued to howl into the
wee hours of the night, but at some point eventually subsided and moved out to
sea.
Up on Friday morning for breakfast at 8, and then checked
out and loaded up the car for our last night in England, which was to be spent
at Heathrow, convenient for an early flight on Saturday morning. We first headed to Oxford, though, to take a
quick look at the Ashmolean Museum. Not too much trouble getting into Oxford and
surprisingly there were a few parking spaces in the underground garage nearest
the Randolph Hotel (really lovely
place to stay!) and the museum.
We had a good look around and had drinks and cake/scone in
their café, and then out to Heathrow.
Well … that place is well and truly a rabbit warren and it was very
difficult, with all the construction zones and temporary one-way streets, to even
figure out where the hotel (a fairly new Hilton
Garden Inn) was located, but we eventually found it stuck out near the Hatton Cross Underground and Bus Station. Checked in and got a nice room on the 7th
floor. As it had been rather painful
finding the place anyway, we decided to go ahead and fill up the car with
diesel and turn it in early, rather than trying to mess with it in the morning
when we had a plane to catch.
So … gas was fairly simple to find, and then it was back out
and around and up and down, etc. until we finally got to the Europcar drop-off. Can’t say the directional signage was all
that great, but we turned in the car without problem and then hopped on the
rental car shuttle back to Terminal 2.
From there, we thought about taking the underground back to Hatton Cross, but neither of us had our
Oyster cards (for use on London transport) and it would have cost us £4.90 EACH – the equivalent of more than $12
for the two of us to go less than a mile!
However, a nice man at the underground explained that if we went
upstairs to the Heathrow Bus Station,
we could catch the 285 bus to Hatton Cross for FREE! Definitely sounded
like a good idea! So, upstairs and voila, there was a 285 – and what was
even better, we didn’t even have to go as far as Hatton Cross, as the bus let us off directly in front of our hotel –
for free! So, definitely a deal!
Had some okay sandwiches at the hotel’s bar, as we had had
no lunch, and came down about 6 pm for dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. Okay food, but not great – we both had their
chicken and noodles stir fry. Then back
up for Robert, the master packer, to do one last magical trick – making everything
disappear inside two suitcases! He made
it with no problem and I was in bed about 8:30 am – we wanted to catch the 6 am
Hopper bus. With alarms set for 4:30 am though, we were
ready to go about 5:05 am, so took a cab the short distance and we were in
Terminal 2! Really, there were no other
people checking in at that time, so we literally walked right through bag check
and security and were inside the gated area by 5:20 am! As we had passes to the Red Carpet Club, we decided to spend the time there until our plane
was called. However, Terminal 2 is a
brand-new terminal (called The Queen’s
Terminal) and unbeknownst to us, the walk to the Red Carpet Club took about 15-20 minutes – so there was no going
back to look around in the shops for me!
Oh well! The Red Carpet Club is really, truly lovely! Huge space with lots of comfy chairs and
sofas and lots and lots of power outlets!
They were serving a full buffet breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, hash
browns, tomatoes and mushrooms, which was great! I doubt if we would have done as well at the
hotel! So, settled in for a couple of
hours and then out the door to our plane.
There were definitely more people aboard the flight than
when we had traveled over in January but still lots of room. We were lucky enough to get three seats
across for me and two seats for Robert (because he can sleep sitting up, which
I cannot!) Flight left on time and was
very uneventful, albeit long – about 11
hours 15 minutes. Whew!! Arrived at LAX and were through immigration
and out the door in minutes. Caught the A Shuttle Bus over to Southwest at
Terminal 1 and, again, no real lines for check-in or security. And with TSA
Pre-Check, we didn’t even have to take off our shoes – which I loved, as I
am still wearing my SAS Little Boot
shoes, which are a REAL pain to get
off and on, especially quickly!
Ordered incredibly expensive hot dogs (Foot-long hot dog on
6-inch bun; not very easy to eat) at the restaurant in Terminal 1 – something like
$12+ EACH, but of course they came
with lots of “fixings” … none of which I wanted. However, it was good under the
circumstances. Then, to our flight, and
everything spot on-time. Excellent
flight across to home, and I do have to admit – arriving home in Tucson is a
much more pleasant experience than arriving into Phoenix and having to drive
for several hours! Bob and Stew met us
as we came down the stairs, and it was SO great to see them! Home about 6:15-ish, and SO happy to be here!
So, that’s it! I won’t
be clogging up any more email inboxes for quite a while! Thanks to everybody who came along with us
and we really enjoyed getting all your thoughts and comments along the
way! Now … to do laundry and recover
from jet-lag!
[Added note: Notwithstanding the glitches along the way –
closed hotels, a trip to the hospital in Istanbul, cold weather in Cappadocia –
this was a fantastic trip. Stonehenge was a very special experience, as
was Turkey where we had a good mix of visits to old and new (to us) sites. Margaret says that now we need not return to
Turkey but that could change if they excavate new sites at Gobekli Tepe – who knows?
And now, she is ready to get into serious planning for our next
adventure(s)! Stay tuned! – R]
Much love,
m
xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment