Day -03 5/28-29 - Seattle to Southampton

We began this most current trip by heading to the  SeaTac airport with a little help from our son, Ken.  We checked into Virgin Atlantic at 1:30pm for a 4:25pm flight.  Since we fly standby, we didn't get a seat assignment, we just headed out to the S-8 gate via the underground train.  There we found a charging station and waited for our seat assignment.

About 45 minutes before the scheduled flight, we received our seat assignment and joined in group 5.  The plane was only about 50% full so there was lots of room to spread out and even sleep using the 4 center seats.  The plane was a 787-900 Dreamliner which is among my favorite long haul airplanes to fly.  We left the gate promptly at the scheduled time and became 2nd in line for departure behind an Amazon Prime 767.  

Once in the air, we enabled the entertainment system and were served water or other choices of drinks and followed by a nice chicken dinner.  We watched OTTO (really good, but a tear jerker) followed by the Fablemans which also was really good.  That took about half of the flight.  The rest of the flight I tried unsuccessfully to sleep.  About an hour and a half before our expected arrival we were served an egg & cheese sandwich with yogurt and a pastry.  Yummy!  I have to say the Virgin Atlantic employees were the friendliest of all the air carriers we have travelled on.

As we approached Heathrow the Captain announced that we would have to go into a holding pattern.  Even with the holding pattern we landed 25 minutes early but lost all of that time waiting for a gate.  Once deplaned, we walked the long walk to the passport control area where our passports were scanned and the system used cameras to compare our photo to our passport documents.  This procedure which is available to UK, EU, Canadian, Irish, USA, and a few other countries is called the eGate.  It's pretty efficient and our wait was less than 15 minutes despite a pretty long queue.  We then collected our luggage and passed through immigration and walked an even longer walk to the Central Bus Station at Terminal 3.

Once we were at the station, I used a machine to purchase our bus tickets to Southampton which departed at 11:50am.  There is a 3rd party vendor who also sells tickets and provides tourist information.  While waiting, we enjoyed conversation with a man who had just returned from Nigeria on business and we heading home to his wife north of London.  

About 20 minutes before our scheduled bus departure, the bus arrived and we queued up to drop off our luggage and board the bus.  The driver was extremely friendly.  The fare for the two of us was 43 pounds for the two hour ride.  After the passengers from our stop were loaded we made stops at terminals 4 & 5.  This airport is huge!  We then headed off down the M25 towards Southampton.  There was really heavy traffic headed towards Heathrow.

The trip was present and I even nodded off a bit until we arrived in Southampton.  We noticed several large cruise ships in port which was quite a thrill. I checked later and there were 4 in port today.  

We gathered our luggage and headed off on what was supposed to be an 11 minute walk to our AirBnB.  We got a little turned around so our walk ended up taking 45 minutes but that included a fortuitous stop at a phone store so I could buy a power bank for my phone as I had left mine at home.  I really like this one as all of the cords are attached including the charging cord.  We navigated our way to where our AirBnB was supposed to be, but the description was off.  I called the proprietor and got instructions to go to the #1 door, a code was provided to get the key, and the key unlocked both the outside front door and the second floor unit.  

The AirBnB unit is a clean and comfortable 2 bedroom unit with WIFI, a kitchen, washing machine, and a nice flatscreen TV.  We settled in and then decided to seek out some dinner and purchase some breakfast provisions.  We retraced our steps back to Upper Bar street (a major shopping street that has a long pedestrian only walkway).  We found the Shoulders Arms pub and enjoyed our first meal in England:  Fish & Chips of course!  The portions were large and included green peas and French fries.  The workers here were also super friendly.  

We found a local supermarket and stocked up on breakfast goodies and some Pepsi Max before heading back to our AirBnB.  Once there we tried to stay awake.  I lasted until about 9pm but couldn't fight it any longer and collapsed on the bed while Angela watched a talent show on TV.  I woke up just before midnight and joined a YouTube live stream that I normally participate in on Monday afternoons at 4pm PDT (Travelling With Bruce). Everyone seemed thrilled to get my update from Southampton, and after an hour, the show ended and I caught up with another YT video series I follow before falling back asleep.  

And so ended our long two days of travel.  We'll be using an APP on my phone (GPS my City) to organize our walking tours over the next two days.  Stay tuned for more.