Falling in love with New England… TRIP REPORT COMPLETED - Page 21 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
The rude dude reminds me of the C boarding folks for Southwest who jump up and get in the way of folks with A boarding passes.
I was thinking the exact same thing! Even sometimes in the A boarding group people try to get in front of you, even though they have a higher boarding number. Great shots of landscape and Windsor Castle!
Mi think I posted my response to your previous post at the same time you were responding to someone else, so my post slipped by... I had a question about the Heathrow lounges if you get a chance.
Love the views of Windsor Castle again, but you're right, the last flight were a little better.
You didn't need any more bruises! Ouch!
Not a nice start to your trip with the news of Bill! Just so sad and senseless!
It was.
Quote:
Too bad your hotel and meal there wasn't all that great!
The lounge in Heathrow looked quite nice and glad the two of you made good use of it with the food and drink offerings as well as the massages you got! The bar on the plane looks a bit odd and doesn't really show me much! Nice shots of Windsor on take off!
Mi think I posted my response to your previous post at the same time you were responding to someone else, so my post slipped by... I had a question about the Heathrow lounges if you get a chance.
So was this a lounge from one of the airlines, or just a general lounge? Are there many of these at Heathrow? I guess you need to know what terminal you fly out of before booking one. I'm thinking about booking that for our flight home in August. Our flight out is 4:30 pm, and I believe we disembark at 8 am. We are looking at a car service that would take us from Southampton to Windsor Castle, and then on to Heathrow, but even with tat I think we'll have lots of extra time.
Firstly, so sorry I missed this.
Right, this was a lounge that anyone can book. There are two types of lounge at Heathrow, the first is the ones provided by the airlines for their first class/business class passengers. That's what we were in for our flight out to San Francisco, as we were flying Upper Class with Virgin Atlantic. I know British Airways have something similar and I think a lot of the other airlines either have their own or share with other airlines.
The other type is this kind of lounge where you can pay to go there. It cost us Ł30 (about $45) each, which I felt was good value, given that we'd have to pay for breakfast anyway, and we had somewhere quiet to wait and somewhere we could easily find power points to use the laptops etc.
You would need to know which terminal you're flying out of to make a booking. The other thing to know is that a lot of the lounges have a three hour maximum stay, at least that's what they say when you book. Frankly, how the heck they'd know if you spent more than three hours there, I do not know. It's not like they go around looking for you to throw you out, as far as I could see.
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Well, if you thought in the earlier photos that you didn’t see any form of a blind for the window, you’d be spot on. There isn’t. Instead you use this to darken the window. It’s very unique, but also a bit surreal, and takes a bit of getting used to.
The mood lighting in the cabin was very interesting, and it was very subtle whenever it changed colour. You could sort of work out that something had changed, but you weren’t quite sure what to begin with, if that makes sense?
There was also no rhyme or reason to it. While the crew were serving lunch, the lighting just changed, and even the stewardess jumped, and told us she still hadn’t been able to get used to it.
This was pretty much the view from our window, when we weren’t playing around with tinting it, for the majority of our journey:
Not long after take-off, we were brought first hot towels (and wow, these were hot, I couldn’t hold the darned things, they were so hot! ) and then a choice of drinks, before lunch was served. There were three choices for lunch, as there always are, and I was disappointed that there was no fish dish, but two meat choices and a vegetarian. Thankfully, the vegetarian one was one that I was very happy with. I went for the vegetable moussaka, a Greek classic with a twist – mixed roasted vegetables layered with aubergine (eggplant) slices, tomato and béchamel sauce and topped with cheese. To start off with, you had a mixed salad, made up of oranges and sultanas on fresh crisp leaves with a pomegranate and raspberry dressing. This was one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, it was that good. The flavours were superb and I absolutely adored the dressing. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but then I couldn’t get enough of it after a while. It was lovely, and I’m not normally a fan of dressings. I was disappointed to see that the dessert was apple Normandy cake with crčme Anglaise, which of course I couldn’t have, so Mark had it. I did ask if they had anything else though…
Mark did toy with the idea of the chicken tikka, but the stewardess said it was a bit on the hot side, so he decided to play it safe and stuck with the cottage pie, rich minced beef with a parsley mashed potato top and green beans, although it did look a bit dry to me.
Once we’d finished our lunch and they were clearing everything away, the stewardess who said she’d try and find me another dessert told me that they were still looking, and if they found something, they’d bring it out to me. Well, she was as good as her word, because not long after, this turned up, a chocolate cheesecake with raspberry sauce, and it was delicious. Now that’s what I call service.
I thought the food was once again first class. It’s something Virgin Atlantic do really seem to have stepped up the quality on big time.
As for the entertainment, well with the new planes, we had the facility to play and pause movies, which is a big bonus, and to go back to the place you left it. It’s just as well as we did, as something happened about half an hour into the flight and the entire entertainment system had to be rebooted. Thankfully that only took about five minutes.
I settled down to watch the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as I’d enjoyed the first one, and I felt I needed something that would make me laugh or smile at the least after the events of the last day. It certainly did that. There were some wonderful lines in it, and it didn’t feel like a second rate sequel in the least. I think I enjoyed it just as much as the first film, if not more. There is a line in it about “death by cow” and don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that any cows were hurt, otherwise I wouldn’t find that funny in the slightest, but this bit was very funny, and those cows get everywhere these days.
After that finished, I settled down to sleep for about an hour or so, although I don’t think I did sleep much in the end. The only point where I did, a song from one of Cirque du Soleil’s shows came on, and in my half asleep state, scared the living daylights out of me, as suddenly it sounded like someone was shouting at me. That is the only problem with putting your iPod on random, you never quite know what you’re going to get next…
When I woke up, we had about three hours to go, and I checked out their very neat sky map system, which you could have either on the monitor…
… or the handset…
That’s a very nice touch, as it means you can constantly keep an eye on where you are, while still watching a movie. On the last flight, it was a pain trying to flip between the two.
The next movie I watched was Danny Collins, which I really enjoyed. It was a great feel good movie, and just what I needed, something a little bit upbeat, again to cheer me up.
Eventually, we were coming in over land, although we still had three hours of the flight to go…
Next: “you need to put an egg timer on how long you’re spending with people”
It never ceases to amaze me the way people rush to board first, even on flights where you have allocated seats. And the thing that really amazes me is it is usually economy travellers, Now i can understand wanting to get to your first class seat and free champagne quickly but rushing to get to your 16" cattle class seat that you will be stuck in for 14 hours baffles me.
The last time I flew Emirates I was lucky enough to get a first class upgrade and there were 3 of us in the cabin. When they started boarding they were very clear they wanted first class only (boarding through a different door on a different level) and 100 people rushed down the shute and had to come back and go down the stairs to their boarding shute.
Was that Virgin Premium Economy the food looks good.
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Last edited by Thomhazel; 10-05-2015 at 03:48 AM..
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The food on your flight looked first class! I remember the days when the airlines would at least serve you a little sandwich on our flights. Now you get a beverage with no peanuts or pretzels! Glad that you had a couple movies that were uplifting to watch
What a spread in the lounge! Glad you enjoyed your massage! Great pictures from the flight and the food looks delish! Wish we could get something like that over here!
First, thanks for the lounge info. I have a while to figure out my terminal I guess, since we don't fly home from London until August 28th!
Your meal looked delicious! Virgin Atlantic certainly seems to have most airlines beat on food.
Cool with the window tinting, but I think I could live without the weird lighting.
Wow the food looks and sounds delicious! But that lighting makes it look a weird color. The window tinting thing sounds fun. Kind of neat that you can still look out the window, just tinted. I like that idea!
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It never ceases to amaze me the way people rush to board first, even on flights where you have allocated seats. And the thing that really amazes me is it is usually economy travellers, Now i can understand wanting to get to your first class seat and free champagne quickly but rushing to get to your 16" cattle class seat that you will be stuck in for 14 hours baffles me.
Oh gosh, I am so with you on that!
Quote:
The last time I flew Emirates I was lucky enough to get a first class upgrade and there were 3 of us in the cabin. When they started boarding they were very clear they wanted first class only (boarding through a different door on a different level) and 100 people rushed down the shute and had to come back and go down the stairs to their boarding shute.
Wow!
Quote:
Was that Virgin Premium Economy the food looks good.
It was, the food was excellent. I didn't taste the food on BA on the way back, but Mark wasn't very impressed.
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Just so sad and senseless! 
The bar on the plane looks a bit odd and doesn't really show me much! Nice shots of Windsor on take off! 
We've only flown a few times with Southwest, but on those occasions, everyone's been so well behaved... 
Thank goodness a sick pilot didn't delay you all too long. 
) and then a choice of drinks, before lunch was served. There were three choices for lunch, as there always are, and I was disappointed that there was no fish dish, but two meat choices and a vegetarian. Thankfully, the vegetarian one was one that I was very happy with. I went for the vegetable moussaka, a Greek classic with a twist – mixed roasted vegetables layered with aubergine (eggplant) slices, tomato and béchamel sauce and topped with cheese. To start off with, you had a mixed salad, made up of oranges and sultanas on fresh crisp leaves with a pomegranate and raspberry dressing. This was one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, it was that good. The flavours were superb and I absolutely adored the dressing. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but then I couldn’t get enough of it after a while. It was lovely, and I’m not normally a fan of dressings. I was disappointed to see that the dessert was apple Normandy cake with crčme Anglaise, which of course I couldn’t have, so Mark had it. I did ask if they had anything else though… 
Glad you enjoyed your massage! Great pictures from the flight and the food looks delish! Wish we could get something like that over here! 
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