Conorama
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2012
The LONG Day of Travel Home
And thus, our "we just have to get through this" day of travel was upon us- featuring one ship, 1 taxi, 2 planes, one bus, 3 countries, 3 very tired humans, and way, way, way too many hours...
Can you see how much we were looking forward to this?
Anyhow- we got up at our usual time (6:30 or 7:00) and muddled through showers, etc.
Even though we didn't have a fancy MDR breakfast, we did have fancy plating...
(We supplement this with some yogurt that we get either that morning from Cabanas or that we've saved from the night before, plus coffee from the Cove Cafe- so now you know how to have a nice breakfast in your room before your busy morning.)
Decked out in our now famous layers, we did the usual last day shuffle. We avoided elevators like plagues. We had left tip envelopes with appropriate folk the day before. We handed in our comment card. We lined up. We got off. We found our luggage - all of this before 9:00 a.m.
We also then found our taxi... which was very nice to find (remember the beginning of this trip in Copenhagen)?
(DCL Queen and her boys were heading off to a day and a bit in London... so we parted ways with them for now.)
The taxi ride to Gatwick was about 1 hour and a half, I think? It wasn't that thrilling. We were all pretty quiet. We plugged Conor into an audiobook, which always helps.
Gatwick was very nice, actually, and we were very excited to find out we had a special place to go through security due to our Saga status with Iceland Air. I'm not sure why we were excited, though I'm guessing the line ups were shorter, as the security aspect is still the same.
We finally found our lounge, and (remember we were never even in a lounge prior to the beginning of this trip), we were kind of disappointed. It was crowded, noisy and not that exciting. We finally found a spot to sit and squish in to eat some lunch. I sent Conor and DH out to peruse things and they found a lovely Ravenclaw keychain for his souvenir collection, which helped with the crowded/noisy part of things.
Anyhow- it was nice to get OUT of the lounge and onto our airplane... because, we were once again reunited with Saga class. (Happiness.)
Conor was SOOO excited to be back on Saga class, this happened shortly after takeoff at 1:30 p.m.
Fortunately, he woke up from his nap in time to eat. I must have decided to showcase the food we ate, so I'll share these now.
Do I remember what this was? NOPE. Do I know it was very yummy? YEP.
Flight segment number 1 took us back to Iceland (3rd time!) and we celebrated the occasion by taking a photo of the plane in the background.
Bound and determined to make the most of Saga class, we decided to still go and visit the Saga lounge, to recover from the disappointment of the Gatwick lounge. Now, if you remember back to the beginning of this (ha!) you may recall that this means you have to leave passport control. We did this, had a nice stretch/walk to get there, had a bit of a snack (because on days like this you have no idea what mealtime it is at any given time... if there is food, you eat). And then, thinking we had left plenty of time, we headed back out to our gate... to find a VERY LONG line for passport control. EEK.
I'm reasonably certain we all died a few deaths in that line, but fortunately it started to move quickly after a while so we heaved great sighs of relief, made it to our gate, boarded, and collapsed in our seats. PHEW.
Fortunately, Iceland Air wanted me to feel better, so they gave me this:
(Again- I don't remember what it was except for yummy sparkling wine of some variety with a cool water bottle).
And then they gave me this:
Fear not- Conor got some of this yumminess too. He was a big fan of this:
Then, after a bit, we had some supper- Conor had the salmon, and I had whatever that other thing is that was very nice.
After that, we mostly just sat, watched stuff, and finished winging across the Atlantic until we landed in Toronto. You know - living the vacation dream.
We landed. Yippee! Or wait. No yippee. We wait. A long time. Like... 1 hour from when we landed until when we could get off. Keep in mind that it was 7:00 p.m. Ontario time, which meant it was for us, about 1:00 a.m. London time, which meant that we were all GRUMPY. And I'm pretty sure everyone needed to pee. I know I did.
This is us waiting... or the back of my kid waiting anyway.
FINALLY, we were allowed off. We found bathrooms. We grumped. We headed to the place where you have to scan your passports and have your photos done... and people were generally also tired, grumpy and confused. We finally got to a kiosk and do you THINK we could actually figure out how to do what they were asking? Nope. Finally, I realized what we were doing wrong, and things got better after that.
Fortunately at this point we knew what to do- we cleared the rest of the hurdles to get to our luggage, which was all there for us, and we trekked to our airport hotel room. We were smart enough to know to mostly just collapse (with the cleverly packed PJs easy to find in the luggage because I am SMART). We hit bed at about 1:30 a.m. or so.
And now... I'm going to bed soon. Good night!
And thus, our "we just have to get through this" day of travel was upon us- featuring one ship, 1 taxi, 2 planes, one bus, 3 countries, 3 very tired humans, and way, way, way too many hours...
Can you see how much we were looking forward to this?
Anyhow- we got up at our usual time (6:30 or 7:00) and muddled through showers, etc.
Even though we didn't have a fancy MDR breakfast, we did have fancy plating...
(We supplement this with some yogurt that we get either that morning from Cabanas or that we've saved from the night before, plus coffee from the Cove Cafe- so now you know how to have a nice breakfast in your room before your busy morning.)
Decked out in our now famous layers, we did the usual last day shuffle. We avoided elevators like plagues. We had left tip envelopes with appropriate folk the day before. We handed in our comment card. We lined up. We got off. We found our luggage - all of this before 9:00 a.m.
We also then found our taxi... which was very nice to find (remember the beginning of this trip in Copenhagen)?
(DCL Queen and her boys were heading off to a day and a bit in London... so we parted ways with them for now.)
The taxi ride to Gatwick was about 1 hour and a half, I think? It wasn't that thrilling. We were all pretty quiet. We plugged Conor into an audiobook, which always helps.
Gatwick was very nice, actually, and we were very excited to find out we had a special place to go through security due to our Saga status with Iceland Air. I'm not sure why we were excited, though I'm guessing the line ups were shorter, as the security aspect is still the same.
We finally found our lounge, and (remember we were never even in a lounge prior to the beginning of this trip), we were kind of disappointed. It was crowded, noisy and not that exciting. We finally found a spot to sit and squish in to eat some lunch. I sent Conor and DH out to peruse things and they found a lovely Ravenclaw keychain for his souvenir collection, which helped with the crowded/noisy part of things.
Anyhow- it was nice to get OUT of the lounge and onto our airplane... because, we were once again reunited with Saga class. (Happiness.)
Conor was SOOO excited to be back on Saga class, this happened shortly after takeoff at 1:30 p.m.
Fortunately, he woke up from his nap in time to eat. I must have decided to showcase the food we ate, so I'll share these now.
Do I remember what this was? NOPE. Do I know it was very yummy? YEP.
Flight segment number 1 took us back to Iceland (3rd time!) and we celebrated the occasion by taking a photo of the plane in the background.
Bound and determined to make the most of Saga class, we decided to still go and visit the Saga lounge, to recover from the disappointment of the Gatwick lounge. Now, if you remember back to the beginning of this (ha!) you may recall that this means you have to leave passport control. We did this, had a nice stretch/walk to get there, had a bit of a snack (because on days like this you have no idea what mealtime it is at any given time... if there is food, you eat). And then, thinking we had left plenty of time, we headed back out to our gate... to find a VERY LONG line for passport control. EEK.
I'm reasonably certain we all died a few deaths in that line, but fortunately it started to move quickly after a while so we heaved great sighs of relief, made it to our gate, boarded, and collapsed in our seats. PHEW.
Fortunately, Iceland Air wanted me to feel better, so they gave me this:
(Again- I don't remember what it was except for yummy sparkling wine of some variety with a cool water bottle).
And then they gave me this:
Fear not- Conor got some of this yumminess too. He was a big fan of this:
Then, after a bit, we had some supper- Conor had the salmon, and I had whatever that other thing is that was very nice.
After that, we mostly just sat, watched stuff, and finished winging across the Atlantic until we landed in Toronto. You know - living the vacation dream.
We landed. Yippee! Or wait. No yippee. We wait. A long time. Like... 1 hour from when we landed until when we could get off. Keep in mind that it was 7:00 p.m. Ontario time, which meant it was for us, about 1:00 a.m. London time, which meant that we were all GRUMPY. And I'm pretty sure everyone needed to pee. I know I did.
This is us waiting... or the back of my kid waiting anyway.
FINALLY, we were allowed off. We found bathrooms. We grumped. We headed to the place where you have to scan your passports and have your photos done... and people were generally also tired, grumpy and confused. We finally got to a kiosk and do you THINK we could actually figure out how to do what they were asking? Nope. Finally, I realized what we were doing wrong, and things got better after that.
Fortunately at this point we knew what to do- we cleared the rest of the hurdles to get to our luggage, which was all there for us, and we trekked to our airport hotel room. We were smart enough to know to mostly just collapse (with the cleverly packed PJs easy to find in the luggage because I am SMART). We hit bed at about 1:30 a.m. or so.
And now... I'm going to bed soon. Good night!