Florididdypop Volume 2 - Day 0: Travel to Heathrow

[moosha]

Day 0 – Wednesday 16th April 2014

The alarm was set for 5 am as I felt like I had loads to do before the taxi arrived at 4 pm to take us to Heathrow. Despite a big mental 'to do' list, I snoozed for five minutes and then headed for the shower to wake me up. I could already feel the excitement building in my tummy, but I wouldn't be able to relax into the holiday until everything was checked off. I was cleaning the bathrooms by 6.30 (I wouldn't usually attack the housework so early in the day), did some washing, finished packing the last few bits: (hairbrushes, make up, ipad etc – the things you can't pack until the last day), faffed a bit (I'm an excellent faffer) and the girls woke up around 6.30 (Freya) and 7 am (Seren.)

Mat had also got up at the crack of dawn with me as he was pretty stressed out about finishing off his work. He was working from home, but finishing a bit early because we would be leaving at 4. It would be 27 days before he'd be logging on again (apart from the occasional Blackberry checking on holiday, which I had said was only allowed late in the evenings once the girls were in bed.) He was pretty tetchy because he was trying to get everything wrapped up so I decided to pretty much stay out of his way.

My mum was coming over at 9.30 to look after the girls while I went to the beauty salon to get 'holiday ready' and Mat finished off his work. She was taking them to the garden centre up the road to decorate Easter eggs and have some lunch. Mum arrived about 15 minutes early which kind of threw me as I was mid-faff with deciding where to put my straighteners and she was throwing extra questions and things to think about at me. Then Mat shut himself in his office on a conference call and I couldn't find the car keys anywhere so I was panicking. The keys were, of course, in my handbag and I discovered this after I disturbed his call and turned everything upside down searching for them :angry:. I ended up leaving later than planned and so arrived at the salon dead on my appointment time of 10 am.

As soon as I walked in I immediately relaxed, probably because I knew I couldn't do any more holiday prep while I was there, and that when I went home that afternoon it would finally be time to go. I had booked these appointments in January, and the big day had felt so long away then, but it had finally arrived. I have been seeing Sophie for gel nails and regular massages (I suffer with back, neck and shoulder problems) for a couple of years. I really enjoy chatting to her and I'm always really happy with what she does so I knew I could just chill and enjoy my five hours of treatments. Sophie loves Disney and Despicable Me, she's never been to the US but loves Disneyland Paris so she's more than happy to chat Disney with me and talking about the holiday was making me even more excited. Sophie was really excited for us too, which was lovely, and I forgave her for referring to WDW as 'Disneyland' twice during my appointments .

First up was the essential waxing, then lovely turquoise gel toenails, then Sophie spent two hours on my Minnie and Mickey gel fingernails. We had been discussing my Disney nail art for months, and she had done some similar designs on a friend of hers who'd had her recent hen weekend at Disneyland Paris. I was worried she would feel really under pressure because I had been so excited about having Disney nails and she is a perfectionist. In the event, she was a superstar with such a steady hand and she really kept her cool. She kept reassuring me that she felt fine about it and was enjoying doing them. Five hours with no break and no food and she still managed this:







I was really impressed with them and I got lots of compliments on them during the holiday, even if they didn't quite last the full three and a half weeks (they were chipped and discoloured by the time we came home.) My five hour marathon treatments session ended with a lovely 45 minute back massage and I left even more excited than when I had arrived. All I had to do was go home and wait for the taxi. I was feeling a bit light-headed having been up since 5 am and having only had a bowl of cereal by this point, so I quickly ate the rolls I'd brought with me before I drove home as quickly as I could. I was conscious that there was going to be about 45 minutes between me walking in the door and getting in the taxi, and there would inevitably be more faffing to do before we could leave. Of course, because I was in a hurry, I got stuck behind two slow cars and then got held up at the level crossing by our house (it happens on about 5 % of my journeys to and from home, usually always when I am rushing or late.)

I walked in to find that Mat had shut down his work computer and was much happier than when I had left, he was definitely now in 'holiday mode.' Excellent news. He had dealt with the washing up and tidied the kitchen, got the washing in off the line and brought the luggage down all ready to go. The girls had obviously had a great time with Nanna, and she had made sure they were all changed into their travelling clothes. Seren and Freya were pretty much bouncing off the walls at this point and kept saying 'can we go now?' Mum was quite clearly stressed (unnecessarily) on my behalf, and had been worrying that I wasn't going to be back in time to be ready to go. She left pretty much as soon as I walked through the door to give me a chance to rush around like a headless chicken. I had to make sure the house was all set for us to leave it for nearly a month, get into my own travel clothes and switch over to my 'holiday handbag.' I had just the right amount of time in the event, and I was ready just as the taxi arrived ten minutes early at 3.50 pm.

John the taxi driver and Mat loaded all the luggage into the mini-van while I got the girls into their car seats. We have used this local airport taxi company several times before, we've always been impressed with them, and they would store the girls' car seats for us until John loaded them back into the mini-van when he came to collect us from Gatwick on May 12th. Nice and straightforward (and no, there is not an ominous sounding 'or so we thought' coming up. All ran completely smoothly with the taxi transfers.) Mat dropped some house keys off with our neighbour and she came out to wave us off, bless her. We pulled away at 3.55 pm, and it pleased me no end that we were on our way a few minutes early as I was a little worried about the late afternoon traffic down to Heathrow.

I sat in the back row of the mini-van with Freya, with a seat between us for her American Girl doll, Lily. Seren and Mat had the same seating arrangement in the row in front of us with Seren's American Girl doll, Jessica, between them. I chatted to Freya about what she had been up to while I had been out. Sample conversation:

Me: 'So what did you have for lunch with Nanna? Did you have a hot meal?'
Freya: 'No.'
Me: 'So what did you have then?'
Freya: 'A cold meal.'

Fair enough. When I got fed up with the M25, I cracked open the Love Hearts and we all had a couple of those. We pulled up at the Sofitel at Heathrow Terminal 5 at 4.55 pm so the journey had taken the usual one hour and we hadn't been affected by any real traffic issues. We went inside the hotel and were impressed, it was very nice indeed. We had managed to book a suite for £80 plus Mat's earned-through-work Le Club Accor reward points. The room rate was about £260 I believe, so we were chuffed with this, especially since it included club lounge access (drinks, complimentary continental breakfast.) The hotel website had said that children were not permitted in the club lounge, and yet our booking stated that all of us would get breakfast included, but only from the club lounge. We asked the guy checking us in to confirm whether the girls could come into the lounge for breakfast, and he said they weren't allowed. We started to ask him how they would be able to have their complimentary breakfast, and the lady standing next to him at the check-in desk chimed in that the girls would in fact be able to come in for breakfast after all. She said they wouldn't be able to come in during the evening but for breakfast it would be fine. Pretty mixed messages since the guy had sounded pretty definitive when he had said 'no', but the lady sounded much more authoritative with her response so we decided to go with her answer, particularly since a 'yes' suited us much more. Actually the guy looked pretty annoyed that she had jumped in like that as she made him look a bit small.

Our suite was on the fourth floor, but we had to walk the length of the hotel to get to it as it was pretty much the opposite end to reception. The corridors on the fourth floor were lovely and light though as they mostly overlooked the hotel restaurants and bars on one side and had windows on the other. We were even able to see planes taking off.

When we got to the suite we were pleased with it. The room was very light and clean,



the décor was simple and modern, and the king sized bed was very comfortable. The sofa had been set up as a bed for the girls which meant there wasn't much space to walk around the room but that was fine with us. The girls immediately made themselves comfortable, kicking off their trainers and getting out the holiday diaries their teachers had given them to fill in.







We had decided that we were going to get an M&S picnic for tea to eat in the suite, rather than going to a restaurant at Terminal 5. We figured we would be having an awful lot of restaurant meals over the next three and a half weeks, and we thought it might be an idea to have a relatively quiet, relaxed evening and an early night. Two years previously, when we had stayed at the Sofitel at Gatwick before flying to Orlando, the girls had been too excited to sleep when we turned the lights off, and had messed about for what seemed like an age, making me stress about how tired they would be after an early start the following day. But here at Heathrow, they were two years older... history couldn't possibly repeat itself could it?

We took some photos in the lobby:







and then had to head all the way back along the hotel towards reception to take the escalator



and then the walkway to Terminal 5, so it took a few minutes to get there. Once into the terminal, we briefly considered abandoning plans for the hotel picnic when we saw the Giraffe Burger mini restaurant which had sandwiches, smoothies and the like. But we all love a good old M&S buffet, we used to have them pretty regularly back in the day when we used to have more weekends away in London. It's been a while since we've stayed away so it would have been rude not to partake when the opportunity presented itself. We went to town stuffing things that caught our fancy into the basket. An M&S picnic for Mat and I always has to include quiche, falafels, houmous and olives so those went in along with some sushi, sandwiches for the girls, couscous salad, crisps, fruit, cheesecake, yogurt and some other bits and bobs. £38.62 lighter we headed back to the suite to tuck in.

I set out all the food:



and served everyone what they fancied onto the paper plates I had brought with us for the occasion. Mat had asked the cashier for knives and forks when he had paid for the food as they were behind the counter in M&S rather than on display for customers to help themselves. Maybe people have been a little greedy with the knives / forks / spoons lately and staff now need to ration them, but I was disappointed when we got upstairs and found there were exactly three forks, three knives and three spoons in the bag, despite us having bought enough food to feed around six people. It occurred to me that Mat could have perhaps checked the quantity of plastic cutlery that the assistant was placing in the bag at the time (I was outside the store with the girls, trying to keep a lid on Freya's excitement levels before she did herself, or an unsuspecting passer-by, a mischief as she gets pretty 'bouncy' when she's excited.) I decided not to pursue this argument since my husband was still in a happy 'holiday mood' at this point.

So we did our best to tackle the M&S buffet mountain, our efforts somewhat hampered by the pathetic cutlery and having to repeatedly wash spoons etc in the bathroom sink to avoid any houmous / dessert cross-contamination. I couldn't face the chocolate bars so they went in my hand luggage (and were most welcome on two separate evenings during our trip when I was missing British chocolate.) When we were all stuffed, the girls went back to their holiday journals and I set about making sure we had everything to hand that we'd need in the morning and that everything else was packed to my satisfaction (a benefit of Heathrow not having any Virgin Twilight Check-In facilities: no last minute packing dramas.) Mat meanwhile made himself very useful by heading to the club lounge to collect a free Bacardi and diet coke for me and a gin and tonic for himself. While he was down there, he asked the staff member manning the lounge whether it would be ok for the girls to come in the lounge for breakfast tomorrow, and the response was 'It depends who's on the door.' Three staff members, three different answers . We were all in bed just after 9, and Mat and I tried to read (I had some trashy magazines with me that I didn't want to have to carry the following day.) We had to abandon that plan because the girls once again were too excited to sleep. So it was lights off for everyone at 9.10 pm. Seren fell asleep at 9.30 and Freya continued to mess around until we agreed that she could come in our bed. I think the rest of us must all have nodded off before 10 pm.

Next day is here

[LadyDebs86]

Great pre-travel day! Do you have horrendous post-holiday blues? I do I need to start my Trippy but I don't know if I can face it

[moosha]

Originally Posted by LadyDebs86

Great pre-travel day! Do you have horrendous post-holiday blues? I do I need to start my Trippy but I don't know if I can face it

See more...

I didn't realise you were back yet! Hope you had a fab time

I'm not too bad with the post-holiday blues this time which may have something to do with the fact that I quite unexpectedly have a new countdown . I was pretty sad when we got home and within three days had started thinking about booking again. A budget trip this time though, rather that and get back next year than have to wait until 2016. I can't believe Mat has actually agreed to it (although I haven't really given him much of a chance to protest )

I do know how you feel though, I was gutted when we got back in 2012 and I couldn't even face coming on the Dibb for weeks, let alone starting the trip report. When I did actually get started on the trippie, I really enjoyed re-living the holiday and it didn't make me sad, just determined to go back as soon as we could. I'm so glad I have it to look back on now, so I would definitely encourage you to still do it, maybe after a bit more time has passed and you're feeling better

Thanks for reading along

[EllieP]

Been looking forward to your trippie. Can't wait to hear all about it

[Guest]

Great start

[Guest]

Great start! Looking forward to more !

[Dan's Mum]

Fab start - looking forward to reading the next installment .

Dee
xx

[lovedisney89]

Great pre travel day. Look forward to reading more

[Amy1989]

Great day can't wait for more

[mick]

Great start you can't beat an M&S hotel picnic

Joan