Travel Day!
I actually woke up 10 mins before my alarm at 4:50am. Anyone who knows me will know that time of the morning is HARD for me. I'm a night owl. In fact I am rarely in bed before 3am :O I think I had about 4 hours sleep. But hell I was going to DISNEY today so I was up and dressed before you could blink. I even had time for a quick pic in the mirror in my new outfit...
I was wearing all new clothes, does anyone else do this? I always like to buy something new to travel in. This morning even my knickers were new lol. Actually it wasn't till I was on the Magical Express that I realised that the jeans still had a massive tag on the back pocket (which must have been very much on show for the whole journey), Epic Fail! PMSL
We were packed into the car and leaving the house at 5:15am, Wilbur was really stressing having seen the cases going to the car but we did tell him daddy was coming back
He hadn't thrown up by the time he got home so he must have believed us...
We picked Jenny up at hers by 6am and by 6:45am we were at the airport in record time! Sy dropped us off at the drop off point rather than coming inside, no need for a teary goodbye at the gate... though he did text me to say that he may have got a little watery eyed on the way to his parents house (they live 20 mins from the airport so he was going there to work for the morning).
After a bittersweet goodbye at the car we headed straight inside to check in and drop the bags off. Check in was easy and there was only 1 person ahead of us in the queue so that was good
We then went straight through security and went to do a bit of shopping. Jenny bought lots but I managed to restrain myself and just bought a new phone case as my current case was broken - I needed it, honest
I did also buy some food in Boots the Chemist in case I didn't like the food on board.
We then went to look for the gate we needed to get to and it had changed to say it was now leaving an hour later :O baring in mind we had a connecting flight in Dublin! :O I was very worried to say the least... We decided to pass the time getting some breakfast in the Wetherspoons pub (not my choice!), Jenny's food had to be sent back once and then the second was no better and mine was just okay
get me some of that proper American food! I have to say, I've never had good food in a wetherspoons but we were struggling on choice and time, plus it was right next to the gate info and we were stood right there. Won't be rushing back that's for sure. I've not seemed to get a good breakfast in Gatwick, we went to Frankie and Benny's last time and that was rubbish too. Jenny paid for breakfast to say thanks for picking her up which was really lovely of her.
We still had a bit of time before we had to go to the gate so we went into a few more shops and then grabbed a seat to wait.
By the time I was totally sweating and panicking that we were gonna miss our connecting flight (Hayley and Gareth had this very problem with Aer Lingus on their last flight and had to stay overnight in Boston), our gate was called. We were on the plane uber quick as we were taken on first, and sat in the very last row. We watched lots of other people get on board and then a group of young boys aged I would guess at about 11 - 14 all with rugby tour shirts on... and where did they sit? Of course, all in the back rows surrounding us! There was 1 seat next to me which a lady sat in and we exchanged worried looks about the boys. After a long wait on the tarmac for a spot to take off we were in the air and my stress levels were about as high as we were
The captain came on to say that we would have a 50 min journey to Dublin and to apologise about the delay, it was due to the fog in London.
Before long we were coming into land, it seemed to take an age to get to the gate and once we got off we had 15 mins before our next flight was due to take off :O AHHHHH!
There were only 4 of us who had that connecting flight so as soon as we were there we ran over to immigration where there was no queue. We went straight up to the front and were told to go back and fill in a form, don't they know we had a flight to try and make?? The guys were really nice at immigration but our cases weren't off the flight before yet so they couldn't show us a picture and have us identify them, so we had to wait in another room. Major stress levels now as we had just 5 mins, I did have every hope that they would wait for us given that we were at least there in the airport but even so, I was stressing out. The guys were so sweet and kept checking and refreshing their page to look for the bags and soon enough they were there and we could identify them. We then ran off to our gate, having to go another security check but this time with no wait. As it worked out, we actually weren't the last people on the plane! We didn't have to do the walk of shame being the last passengers on the flight, about 6 people came on after us, including the other couple who were on our flight from Gatwick. Our seats were just behind the wing on the edge, Jenny had the window seat while I had the aisle. The staff were really lovely and friendly, the food however was even worse than the normal airline rubbish, glad I had bought a boots meal deal in Gatwick! We both tried the Chicken Tikka but the chicken was so dry it was honestly inedible. It came with a cous cous salad which neither of us ate. Ahh well.
The movies on board didn't really interest me so I passed the time watching the movies Sy had loaded on my iPad. Frozen, Monsters University, Saving Mr Banks and Despicable me 2. I got through them all bar the last half of Despicable me 2. I also napped for a bit, Jenny slept most of the way. I did also pay for an hour's wifi on board so that I could speak so Sy. I didn't get the chance to let him know we had made our flight and I knew he would be panicked so I sucked it up and paid the 10 pound charge (about $15). It was worth it though to speak to him.
Some rather boring pics of the skymap, can you tell I was bored by this point?
I'm not sure I'm a convert to indirect flying, i think i would need to be saving a huuuuuuge amount to be tempted again. Even though the no queue at immigration was amazing, it was just a long journey day - by the time we got to The Beach Club we had been travelling 21 hours from the moment we got in the car that morning. I'm glad we are back to Virgin direct in October
I've sorely missed your posts over on The Dibb, where did you go?really pleased to see you here though,Love your trip and food reports!
