A brief post to document happenings. Yesterday I posted about PVR to YYC. This post covers YYC to LHR, the airport & flight. The duration from YYC, Calgary to LHR, London Heathrow, was 8.5 hours of flight time.
Calgary Airport
I arrived at the airport at 13:30. A free shuttle taxi service was provided by the hotel. My flight was not departing until 20:45 so I had a lot of time to pass. I was able to get in loads of steps.
Five hours before departure I went to the Aspire Lounge to which I had free passes from Westjet MasterCard. If you do not use your companion voucher, Westjet allows you to trade one voucher in for four lounge passes at no extra cost. As a solo traveller this is an excellent alternative to letting the companion passes expire unused.
Aspire Lounge
The lounge was lovely. Clean and tidy but fairly busy and small for an international lounge. I had a little difficulty finding a seat that would accommodate me using my computer and have enough space for bags. Alas, I did find an empty spot, with a nice view down onto the concourse.
The food was buffet style as were the drinks. To start I had a glass of red wine, a lemonade spritzer and a small charcuterie plate.
After some computer work, I enjoyed a glass of white wine, a soda water and a plate with Swedish meatballs, chicken penne, roast potatoes and a little more charcute.
Dessert was a small plate of banana bread with a wee brownie, a bowl of pretzels and trail mix and a cup of Earl Grey Tea. Perfect.
I left the lounge just over an hour before flight departure.
Flying on the 787 Dreamliner
Nice aircraft. I was super lucky and procured a window seat after about 20 tries on line. Initially all the windows were taken when I checked in 24 hours before the flight so the best I could do was an isle. But alas, one showed vacant on about the 20th try and the 8 hours prior to departure. Taurus persistence (or stubbornness) pays off once again. 😊
The first meal was ok but really quite light. It consisted of a small box with 3 meatballs (seemed to be the day for meatballs lol), mashed potatoes and veg. That was accompanied by a dry as the Sahara bun, a small box of couscous and corn salad, and a petit four size piece of carrot cake. Eating with wooden utensils was new, they definitely have their own flavour which is very unpleasant.
Sleeping did not happen, but was not expected to.
Second meal, breakfast, was a petit four size chocolate croissant, dry as the Sahara, a piece of cheddar cheese and 6 slices of apple.
Photographs from the window at sunrise were beautiful.
The Dreamliner has self tinting windows which you can manually adjust should you wish. The blue photo’s are actual colour photographs with the windows tinted about half way. Just beautiful!
From the plane I was able to see the Tower of London, London Bridge, the River Thames and The London Eye!
Landed in Heathrow airport on time. It’s a biggie, not clean or pretty, but easy to navigate.
Next post is when things go south.
