May 23 - 24 Homeward Bound

A vacation must come to an end. How else can you have another one? With that amazing thought, I thought I'd share our exit from Great Britain a.k.a. The United Kingdom.

We left our hotel after breakfast, and dragged our suitcases a half mile to the bus depot, where we boarded the air Express to Heathrow. We had reserved seats in row 3. The bus never really got full. More half of the passengers got off in Bristol. From there to London Heathrow airport was non-stop on the M4 highway. My friend, Carl, took a similar bus from Oxford to LHR two weeks ago.

The trip was uneventful. We arrived about 3 pm, retrieved our suitcases and set off to find a Hoppa bus. These buses constantly circle the airport perimeter picking and dropping off passengers at hotels. It costs £6 each. We found the bus stop, and waited at least 40 minutes for a bus. Then we sat on the bus waiting for our hotel to appear. It did, eventually. The whole process took much longer than we anticipated.

After checking in at the hotel, the clerk asked about our flight time and showed us our return options to the airport. I'd already decided we would take a taxi back. Catching a Hoppa bus was too iffy. It only costs £3 more for the taxi. I was happy.

We found our room, and decided to take an hour nap. Good plan. Steve quickly looked up pubs near us. He found one .4 miles up the road called The Three Magpies. Off we went. It was sunny out, and just a bit warm. It felt good to get outside! We found it without any navigation issues. As we walked in, a young man slipped through the door with us. He grabbed two menus, and said, "Table for two? Follow me." He was coming to work. He still had his knapsack on his back, and hadn't checked in on the time clock yet!

The guy further explained, "you are seated at table 16. When you know what you want, go to the bar and place your order. It will be brought to you." I've frequently seen this process at pubs on this trip, where there is a limited number of staff.

So we reviewed the menu and stepped up to the bar. Right away, we noticed that 3 of the beers on tap had notices on them, "I'm out. I'll back." Oh dear. Then we placed our meal order, the bartender said, "I'm sorry. Only five of our entrees are available. My Hunter's Chicken was available, but not Steve's Fish & Chips. He opted for the Rump Steak and Chips, done medium rare. We paid for our order. Then we heard a general announcement, "We apologize, but our kitchen is closed for the next hour. We are not taking any more orders." Seems a tour group was coming in and their limited staffing was doing everything they could to meet the needs of that group. We'd paid for our meals, and we were assured we would be fed.

We returned to our table and waited. This gave us a chance to look around this place. Right away, Steve switched out his chair for another one nearby. Seems the seat was dropping out. I started noticing that the fabric on the arms of all the chairs was worn through. The fabric that remained was darkly stained a grimey dark brown. Ewww! This place saw better days maybe 25+ years ago! Not good.

Steve's dinner arrived, and he asked me to cut up his steak into bite sized pieces. I tried. There was a streak of gristle going through it that I couldn't cut! I asked the waitress to take it to the kitchen to be cut with a stronger knife. She tried cutting it herself. She didn't do much better, so she took it to the kitchen. She returned to ask what I had ordered. She couldn't find my ticket in the kitchen! It arrived eventually along with Steve's cut up steak that had been given a quick fry to warm it back up. To their credit, they had Heinz ketchup for the fries ("chips"). We ate our meals and finished our pints. As we left, new patrons were in the process of finding out that the selections were limited, but at least the kitchen was running again. We shook our heads as we walked back to the hotel. Steve has a cardinal rule to not eat at the hotel restaurant. He is reconsidering after this experience.

Two last notes on this debacle: 1) We did not get sick. 2) This restaurant was given an acclamation by Trip Advisor for a score of 4 out of 5 in 2022. If that is accurate, what the heck happened?

Our hotel Leonardo was good. It was clean. I checked under the mattress on all four corners. No critters in sight. The bed was small for two people, but we've come to expect that in the UK. The breakfast was also good. The taxi was maybe 5 minutes late, but we got to the airport quickly. Steve went to the assistance desk for a wheelchair. I got in line at the American Airlines desk. Everything went well. Well, I had one small hiccup that didn't seem to bother the security folks. (Good thing! They were armed!) I've been spoiled by TSA-Pre. I put my stuff in the trays, and walked up to the body scanner, and the beeper went off. Oops. Not only had I not removed my belt, but I also hadn't taken off my hiking boots! Geez...

We are now 35 thousand feet up in the air somewhere just south of Greenland. We have a nice steady flight. I'm happily headed for home.

Thank you for following along.

The photos from the Panasonic camera will be added this weekend. All the blog entries will be present and accounted for!