Scotland 2023 Day 11: Going Home

Of course, I got zero sleep before our 3A alarm. I continued to hear street sounds throughout the night, however, as there seemed to always be someone out and about. Around 2A I’m pretty sure I heard drunken singing, and at 330A, while E finished up her shower, I counted 12 people just outside our window. Not sure where these folks were coming from or going to, but they seemed to be out there with purpose.

We hauled our stuff downstairs and right out onto the street since the door into the restaurant was closed (ending our idea that someone would be staffing the front desk at all times). Our taxi driver showed up right on time – actually, about 3 minutes early – which meant that we stood outside for probably less than 60 seconds before we were on our way to EDI airport, arriving about 420A.

The airport was REALLY busy, which was a bit of a surprise. Lots of flights that were going out starting right around 500A. Although there was a lot of terminal noise from flight announcements, they didn’t waste any time with things like “this is how we board the aircraft, here are the carry on rules” and other such stuff. Just a lot of “Delta flight 100 to Heathrow now boarding group 1 at gate 10”, “Delta flight 100 to Heathrow is paging Bob Smith – your gate is closing”….but in the early morning they clearly had 10-15 flights taking off in the same general time window so there was always something on the loud speakers…with an emphasis on loud.

Of course, since we were a good two hours before our flight would board we didn’t even know what gate we wanted – we had to wait until about 50 minutes pre-flight before that was even posted. So we hung out by the closest gate and had a Krispy Kreme doughnut each before learning that our gate was, in fact, the one we were sitting next to. Our plane was at a remote stand so we actually just loaded onto buses before getting onto our (cramped) plane – to sit down you essentially had to stow your kneecaps somewhere else.

But soon enough we were at Heathrow picking up our bags and making the transfer over to Terminal 3. That YouTube video I had watched was absolutely spot-on and made the process so easy – no stress at all because it was exactly like what that guy had filmed. Again, we arrived at the terminal so far ahead of our flight that we again had to wait about 90 minutes for them to post our departure gate, so this time we each got a bag of chips while sitting in the general terminal waiting area. They had posted that one set of gates was a “10 minute” walk while another set was a “20 minute” walk – and fate placed us at the gates that were “20 minutes” away. Note sure what planet the signs were from because it only took us about 6-7 minutes to get there.

We boarded our return flight and settled into the much more comfortable arrangements. Since the LHR-SFO flight is a daytime flight rather than a nighttime flight they spend a lot more time keeping you refreshed than they do on the SFO-LHR leg. I was a bit more precise about documenting the timeline than I was on the outbound flight, and it went something like this.  All times expressed as BDT/PDT(Elapsed from Pushback).
  • 1135A/335A (T-0:35): Boarding
  • 1150A350A (T-0:20): Welcome Prosecco, juice, or water
  • 1210A/410A (T+0:00): Pushback (i.e. right on schedule)
  • 1230P/430A (T+0:20): Takeoff
  • 1245P/445A (T+0:35): Drink/snack service (crunchy snack)
  • 120P/520A (T+1:10): Cleanup
  • 140P/540A (T+1:30): Lunch/drink service (started at front of RH aisle, back of LH aisle)
  • 205P/605A (T+1:55): Cleanup
  • 220P/640A (T+2:10): Coffee/tea – the lights went off somewhere around here
  • 310P/710A (T+3:00): Duty free sales
  • 605P/1005A (T+5:50): Hot sandwich/drink car (not listed in the menus – we got tomato/Emmental sandwiches)
  • 625P/1025A (T+6:10): Cleanup
  • 650P/1050A (T+6:35): Ice cream (it was an apple juice popsicle)
  • 715P/1115A (T+7:00): Water
  • 720P/1120A (T+7:05): Cleanup
  • 905P/105P (T+8:50): Pre-landing hearty snack/drinks (lights up somewhere around here)
  • 935P/135P (T+9:20): Cleanup
  • 1045P/245P (T+10:30): Landing (about 25 minutes ahead of schedule)
For lunch, both Eileen and I had opted for the pulled pork in a BBQ sauce with corn salad and white rice, which was actually much better than either of us expected. Paired with the canned rose it wasn’t too bad. The dessert was mango and passion fruit cheesecake with frosting and topped with shaved coconut was non-descript, unless you like waxy coconut shavings. The mid-flight tomato and cheese toastie hot sandwich was mostly just hot – the cheese was semi-molten while the tomato was mostly non-existent.

For the pre-landing hearty snack (which was a fully plated meal) we basically had the choice of the sweet snack combo or the savory combo. The first was (iirc) cream-cheese and pickle finger sandwiches with some kind of salty caramel snack + something else + scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam. We both selected the savory combo, which included chicken caesar finger sandwiches, a small pork pie (basically a sausage meatball inside a sturdy pastry crust), a smoked salmon blini (a single bite), and the same scone/clotted cream/strawberry jam. The scone was great, the other items were fine as appetite suppressors but were otherwise “meh”.

We both managed several micronaps on the trip home, each of us probably getting 5-10 little 60 second naps, but no serious rest on the trip. I read most of the way and listened to music while E watched some TV and listened to music.

The Happy (and Tired) Wanderers, ready to push back from the gate at Heathrow for the final leg of our journey

Arrival at SFO was pretty unremarkable.  Because we were among the first off the plane (another huge advantage of Premium Economy seating) we were near the front of the line for border control – which moved INCREDIBLY slowly.  There were about 8 booths servicing US citizens, but at a couple of the windows we watched them talking with a single passenger for the entire 5-6 minutes we were in line.  It seemed pretty apparent to me that Caucasians were being sped through the checks but all the brown people were undergoing much more rigorous screenings.  I don’t know what the story was on those who appeared to be getting serious interviews, but our experience was: a) Turn over passport for agent to scan; b) have a quick photo taken by the agent; c) answer the question “Do you have anything to declare”?; d) “Thank you – welcome back”.  In other words, our process took less than 30 seconds.

Anyway, within about 10 minutes of clearing border control our luggage appeared on the conveyors, and we called Robert to discover that they were just a few minutes away.  Within 10 minutes of stepping outside we were in Ashely’s car heading for home, tired but happy.

Once home, we gratefully sat down and got re-acquainted with Midnight.  Fortunately we had a large frozen pizza in the garage freezer so we split that while watching mindless TV.  While E managed to stay up until about 9P I gave up at 7P and went to bed and quickly fell asleep, not getting up again until 630A the following day.

Good trip!


0 comments:

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)