Tuesday
Mar212006
Day 1 - The adventure begins
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 4:50AM
Well today was the start of our big trans-atlantic trip (Henceforth referred to as our adventure)
Last night (Friday) we finished off the last minute chores (fish tank and cat box cleaning etc) and attempted to go to bed early. What with one thing and another it was gone 11pm when we actually made it that far - this was mostly down to me fannying about. Anyway we eventually made it to bed somewhat apprehensive and excited about the journey.
Operation NYC started at 4am on Saturday. This is about when we managed to crawl out of bed to get ready to leave the house. I can tell you now that 4am has no redeeming features - though the cats thought it was great and seemed firmly convinced that we were up just to play with them. We had already organised house and animal sitters so off we went.Â
Challenge 1 - Drive to the long stay car park, deposit the car and then take the shuttle bus to the airport
This seemed fairly simple on the face of it all. Take the address (which we had) plug into a sat nav system (which we have) and then follow the directions.Â
What actually happened was take the address - try and find in the sat nav - and discover it is not there. This called for an impromptue creation and execution of plan B. Plan B turned out to be head to the airport and look for signs to the long stay car park. See there was no need for panic of any kind. On arrival at the airport we did a little happy dance - there were signs for the long stay car park! Ok so it should now be a simple case of follow the signs - which we duly did. Only thing is it turns out that the car park we were booked into was not the one we had managed to find. It was now 5am and I was close to a sense of humor failure. Not a good sign when we have a whole day of travel still to go!
Our saving grace came in the form of the man who was working as the car park attendant. I went to his office and asked if e could help. He was good enough to write down a set of directions (after telling me we were miles away and putting my blood pressure up even higher than it was already). It turns out that this car park was hidden away in an industrial site with no sign posts about 5 minutes from where we were. The whole no sign post thing was really cool - oh no wait a minute - it wasn't. Anyway looking on the positive side crisis one had now been averted and we were on the shuttle bus heading back to the airport.Â
It was now 5.30am and checking had just opened. We were one of the first ones there so there was no queuing needed (another happy dance performed - luckily the terminal was fairly empty so we did not get too many funny looks). The nice lady told us that we were now checked in all the way through to New York and they would take care of the baggage for us. This was excellent as it was one less thing to worry about in the grand scheme of it all. She did seem somewhat bemused however when our response to how many bags would you like to check in was one. I am not sure why this was such a shock - I mean why take more than you need.
Having checked in we settled down for our first concentrated 'waiting period'. Within about 2 minutes Robert was bored but Starbucks came to the rescue and we sat and drank tea for a while. At about 6.40am we headed through security into the departures lounge ready to head off to Heathrow. We were flying with BA and the plane boarded very quickly, only for the captain to come on and tell us that we had a 15 minute delay as there was some wind at Heathrow and they had decided we would have it on the tarmac at Glasgow. This was no great shakes for us as we had a 3 hour wait at the other end anyway - and waiting on a plane is no worse than waiting in a departure lounge.Â
The flight down was pretty smooth and stress free (all things considered). I was massively impressed when the announcement came over the tanoy thing that they would be serving breakfast on the flight. Now I have been on planes before but 9 times out of 10 it is with Cheepo airlines where you are lucky that they don't make you push the plane onto the runway yourself, let alone having free food. How chuffed was I when they mentioned the food. Rob warned me that the food was likely to be not that good - but you know what I was pretty impressed. It was a cooked breakfast (sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, mushrooms, a roll, butter, jam and OJ) The bacon was no great but the rest of it was pretty good. I was really impressed with the mini sausage thing.
We landed in Heathrow bang on our planned time (before they added a 15 minute delay) as we had managed to make the time up on the flight down. You know I have never been too sure quite how they manage that.  If the plane can fly faster then surely they can just make all of the journeys shorter.  Rob had slept though most of the journey but I could not - I was just too hyped. Anyway it turned out that we had to get a bus over to Terminal 3 so it was back to queuing and waiting again - though this time only for 10 minutes or so. Heathrow is surprising large and spread out. I am told that it is the busiest airport in the world. One of the weird things is that it has these massive corridors that you have to walkthrough but in the middle of them there are bits of moving walkway. The walkway is not all like this - just bits of it. It is almost like they had found some and spread it out all over the airport - it was all just a bit odd really.Â
The departure lounge beckoned , so off we trotted. It was full of the usual pap so we mooched a bit and then decided a coffee and danish was in order. Here's a word of advice for you - If you are in Heathrow and have the same notion - DON'T, just step away from the idea. We each had a mocha from one of the restaurants. Well to be fair had a mocha  is a bit of an over statement. We both had a mouthful of the drink that was masquerading as a mocha and then binned it due to its foul nature. It neither tasted like coffee or chocolate - personally I figured it may have been left over jet fuel - but who can say. On the up side the chocolate twistie was good.....TBC
Last night (Friday) we finished off the last minute chores (fish tank and cat box cleaning etc) and attempted to go to bed early. What with one thing and another it was gone 11pm when we actually made it that far - this was mostly down to me fannying about. Anyway we eventually made it to bed somewhat apprehensive and excited about the journey.
Operation NYC started at 4am on Saturday. This is about when we managed to crawl out of bed to get ready to leave the house. I can tell you now that 4am has no redeeming features - though the cats thought it was great and seemed firmly convinced that we were up just to play with them. We had already organised house and animal sitters so off we went.Â
Challenge 1 - Drive to the long stay car park, deposit the car and then take the shuttle bus to the airport
This seemed fairly simple on the face of it all. Take the address (which we had) plug into a sat nav system (which we have) and then follow the directions.Â
What actually happened was take the address - try and find in the sat nav - and discover it is not there. This called for an impromptue creation and execution of plan B. Plan B turned out to be head to the airport and look for signs to the long stay car park. See there was no need for panic of any kind. On arrival at the airport we did a little happy dance - there were signs for the long stay car park! Ok so it should now be a simple case of follow the signs - which we duly did. Only thing is it turns out that the car park we were booked into was not the one we had managed to find. It was now 5am and I was close to a sense of humor failure. Not a good sign when we have a whole day of travel still to go!
Our saving grace came in the form of the man who was working as the car park attendant. I went to his office and asked if e could help. He was good enough to write down a set of directions (after telling me we were miles away and putting my blood pressure up even higher than it was already). It turns out that this car park was hidden away in an industrial site with no sign posts about 5 minutes from where we were. The whole no sign post thing was really cool - oh no wait a minute - it wasn't. Anyway looking on the positive side crisis one had now been averted and we were on the shuttle bus heading back to the airport.Â
It was now 5.30am and checking had just opened. We were one of the first ones there so there was no queuing needed (another happy dance performed - luckily the terminal was fairly empty so we did not get too many funny looks). The nice lady told us that we were now checked in all the way through to New York and they would take care of the baggage for us. This was excellent as it was one less thing to worry about in the grand scheme of it all. She did seem somewhat bemused however when our response to how many bags would you like to check in was one. I am not sure why this was such a shock - I mean why take more than you need.
Having checked in we settled down for our first concentrated 'waiting period'. Within about 2 minutes Robert was bored but Starbucks came to the rescue and we sat and drank tea for a while. At about 6.40am we headed through security into the departures lounge ready to head off to Heathrow. We were flying with BA and the plane boarded very quickly, only for the captain to come on and tell us that we had a 15 minute delay as there was some wind at Heathrow and they had decided we would have it on the tarmac at Glasgow. This was no great shakes for us as we had a 3 hour wait at the other end anyway - and waiting on a plane is no worse than waiting in a departure lounge.Â
The flight down was pretty smooth and stress free (all things considered). I was massively impressed when the announcement came over the tanoy thing that they would be serving breakfast on the flight. Now I have been on planes before but 9 times out of 10 it is with Cheepo airlines where you are lucky that they don't make you push the plane onto the runway yourself, let alone having free food. How chuffed was I when they mentioned the food. Rob warned me that the food was likely to be not that good - but you know what I was pretty impressed. It was a cooked breakfast (sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, mushrooms, a roll, butter, jam and OJ) The bacon was no great but the rest of it was pretty good. I was really impressed with the mini sausage thing.
We landed in Heathrow bang on our planned time (before they added a 15 minute delay) as we had managed to make the time up on the flight down. You know I have never been too sure quite how they manage that.  If the plane can fly faster then surely they can just make all of the journeys shorter.  Rob had slept though most of the journey but I could not - I was just too hyped. Anyway it turned out that we had to get a bus over to Terminal 3 so it was back to queuing and waiting again - though this time only for 10 minutes or so. Heathrow is surprising large and spread out. I am told that it is the busiest airport in the world. One of the weird things is that it has these massive corridors that you have to walkthrough but in the middle of them there are bits of moving walkway. The walkway is not all like this - just bits of it. It is almost like they had found some and spread it out all over the airport - it was all just a bit odd really.Â
The departure lounge beckoned , so off we trotted. It was full of the usual pap so we mooched a bit and then decided a coffee and danish was in order. Here's a word of advice for you - If you are in Heathrow and have the same notion - DON'T, just step away from the idea. We each had a mocha from one of the restaurants. Well to be fair had a mocha  is a bit of an over statement. We both had a mouthful of the drink that was masquerading as a mocha and then binned it due to its foul nature. It neither tasted like coffee or chocolate - personally I figured it may have been left over jet fuel - but who can say. On the up side the chocolate twistie was good.....TBC
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