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An all-day layover in London’s Heathrow airport

By Charles Apple  |  11:58 a.m. Jan. 7, 2011  |  1 comment

So when I left you last, I was having a beer at the Norfolk airport, waiting to board a plane for New York’s JFK airport.

The plane turned out to be one of those tiny American Eagle puddle-jumpers.

Seems like these planes get smaller and smaller every day.

Less than two hours later, however, we were coming in for a landing at JFK. If you look very closely, you can just make out the skyline of the Big Apple in the background here.

My layover at JFK was about two-and-a-half hours. I had a number of important e-mails to send. But the damn wifi wasn’t working in the terminal. Thanks for nothing, Boingo. My messages would have to wait another nine or ten hours until I got to London.

Here was the American Airline jet that took us across the Atlantic:

The guy sitting next to me was from Raleigh and had all sorts of interesting travel stories. It was a cool reminder that, as much as I fly these days, I’m still a neophyte when it comes to international business travel.

Instead of doing the smart thing — sleeping — I watched the movie Inception. Or maybe I just dreamed I saw it. Either way, I managed only to get a couple of hours of shut-eye between JFK and Heathrow. That, combined with the way I felt after making the long, long foot-and-bus journey from Heathrow’s Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 — the British Airways terminal — plus, the fact that it was cold and rainy and looked just awful out there, I decided not to check my bags and ride the express train into downtown London after all.

Meaning I spent the whole damn day today in the British Airways executive lounge.

I shot this thing extensively the last time I flew through here, so I didn’t bother to take too many new pictures.

I spent most of the afternoon out in the terraced area of the lounge that overlooks the concourse. What little sunlight the clouds let through poured through those windows. I figured the light would help me adjust to the five-hour time difference between here and home.

I took a nice long shower, changed clothes and checked my messages. At lunchtime, I skipped the free fingerfood buffet and went next door to Huxleys’ restaurant, where they advertise traditional English cooking. I passed on the obvious choice — fish n’ chips — and went for the Roast of the Day special.

Nearly 12 pounds, though. Man, that’s a lot of meat! Luckily, that was the cost and not the portion size.

I received three large slabs of delicious roast beef, some carrots, greens and potatoes, topped off with that ring-shaped piece of bread they call “pudding.”

Make no mistake: This was delicious.

I topped the whole thing off with Bass beer.

The Bass, unfortunately, was not so tasty. In fact, when the waiter eagerly offered me a second pint, I nearly turned him down. It tasted less like Bass and more like Bassomatic.

The waiter then eagerly offered me a dessert. I’ve been taking my medicine lately and my blood sugar is pretty decent, so I figured I could splurge just a bit. But I wasn’t sure with what. Most of these sounded way too sweet for me.

I went with the Lemon Tart. Which was very much like a lemon meringue pie with a small scoop of ice cream on the side.

Eating so much at lunch backfired one me pretty badly, however. Several times over the afternoon, I nearly dozed off while blogging and answering messages. I think my lack of sleep has definitely caught up to me.

My plane leaves here tonight at 5:50 p.m. — a little less than an hour from now. I’m about to pack up and head down to my gate.

I’m scheduled to arrive at O.R. Tambo airport at 6:45 a.m. tomorrow, South African time. Which will be only 11:45 p.m. Friday night in Virginia Beach.

I plan to get plenty of sleep tonight, however.

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FOLLOW ALONG ON MY LATEST TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA

This entry was posted 11:58 a.m. Jan. 7, 2011 and is filed under South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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