Way Out West - Day 0 – The trip to Heathrow

[wickesy]

As I had to go to work today I was up at 7:15 and after getting washed and dressed I packed my toiletries so that I would be ready to go as soon as I got home later.

I left home at 7:45 and after spending most of the morning working I managed to find time at 11:00 to do online check-in for the flight tomorrow. As the only available seats were a couple of rows in front of what we already had I decided to stick with the seats we had been allocated and printed off our boarding passes so that all we had to do was drop the bags off tomorrow.

Events in the afternoon conspired against me to ensure that I would not be able to get as much out of the way as I had intended to but I still managed to leave things in good order for while I was away and I was able to escape by 4:30, arriving home at 5:00.

The cab to take us to Heathrow was booked for 6:00 and shortly before then the telephone rang. It was the cab driver informing us he was outside so we were soon on the road and after a relatively smooth journey through London we arrived at the Holiday Inn at Heathrow shortly after 7:00. I gave our name at the Reception desk and the receptionist punched away on his computer. He then looked at the confirmation I had placed under his nose and said: “Perfect. I can’t find you because this is Holiday Inn Hillingdon and you are booked in at Holiday Inn Heathrow”. Now I was aware that there are two Holiday Inns at Heathrow and I was pretty confident that we were booked in at the one on the roundabout by the M4 spur. I had also seen the signs for Sipson as we approached the Holiday Inn but even so I had to concede that we were at the wrong hotel.

We went over Guest Services who booked a taxi for us and 15 minutes later, and £11 pounds lighter, we had checked in at the Holiday Inn Heathrow where were allocated room 3202. Dad and I both agreed that although Dad had given the cab company the postcode of the hotel when he booked it, it was not worth getting upset over and it would teach us to be more careful in future.





We made our way down to the bar where we had a pint of Stella each and although the aroma of the food for Indian night at the buffet restaurant was inviting we decided that as we had already had a curry the night before we would have a chicken burger and another pint of Stella in the bar.

At 9:30 we booked a wake-up call and taxi for the morning before retiring to the room and so to bed dreaming of the good times still to come on our holiday.

Tomorrow: Day 1 – The journey

[kmt]

shame about the extra cab fare but the hotel looks nice

[Guest]

Pity about the cab fare David.

[Guest]

We tried to check into the wrong Days Inn in Orlando once turned out we wanted the one just up the road. The room looks lovely though.

[pelsey]

Shame about the extra cab fare, the room looks nice.

[Michelle]

Just getting round to reading your reports David.

Looks like a nice hotel. We are flying from Heathrow next year so will keep it in mind.