Home again

[fbhjr]

We stayed at the hotel at the airport. It was expensive and tried to be all fancy, but it didn’t work for us.
The room had both a shower and bathtub, which was nice. I tried a bath to help my hip, but did not work that well.

Then, all night the tub made a bubbling sound. No idea where it came from. Didn’t stop when I ran more water, blocked the drain, unblocked the drain, etc.
All night long.

The breakfast buffet is quite large. The chef came over to make sure we were enjoying it, but we watched him order and dress down all his workers before that, so we were "it’s great!" just in case.

The good news is, it is right at the international terminal. So, we just walked over to check in.
Due to my wife’s passport issue, we went to the "special help" desk. The man there was very helpful and got us checked in quickly.
We checked a third bag just to not carry it around, and the man got it checked for us for free. So, very nice.
(I’ve found being polite to the folks who are there to help you out often pays off well…)

Getting on the plane was strangely difficult.
We had to take the shuttle off to another building. The shuttle was so crowded that a woman by the door announced to us all that she was usually bought dinner before this kind of thing. We all just nodded.

The gate agent mumbled. A lot.
Everyone was standing around saying "What? Are we boarding? Is there an issue?"
It was like the adults on the old Peanuts cartoons. "wah, wha, waaaah"
The other gates had clearly articulated people making announcements. I had no problem understanding the announcements for the flight to New York, Cairo or Istanbul.

It turned out our crew had not shown up. Even 20 minutes after boarding was supposed to start, they weren’t there.
Exactly why wasn’t clear, although was probably said.

They did show up. About 20 minutes before we were supposed to leave. Then they had to get the plane ready.

When we finally got on one of the flight attendants decided to rearrange the luggage while folks were trying to get on the plane. This seemed inefficient to me. And, we spent a long time standing there while she tried to move things around with a lot of folks waiting behind us.

They also primed the doors before all were closed, started rolling while passengers were still walking around and other things that seemed strange.
I don’t normally fly British Airlines, and this did not encourage me to do it again.

The flight went well. Winds were much less this time, so we made good time. We only landed a few minutes late despite all the issues in London getting on.

We got through all the customs, immigrations, luggage handling and such and had to get the car.
My wife waited with the luggage while I went to walk across the airport to where it was parked. I only went a short ways before I remembered I’d need the keys and went back to get them.

Sadly we got through it all at rush hour. So, it took more than an hour just to get to the first loop road around Boston and other hour to get home from there. (In good traffic I can get from the airport to home in under an hour.)

We stopped at the market on the way home, picked up some stuff for dinner and got home.
We didn’t stay up too late.
It was good to be back in our own bed.