Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
Planes, Trains & Automobiles - The Sequel
Guess who's top of the transatlantic class!
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| ABOVE: An American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER, similar to the one I was about to board, at LHR T3 |
I got up just before 7am. That sounds awfully early, but it was over an hour later than what had been my usual weekday routine for most of 2013. I ate a light-ish breakfast in the ground-floor Executive Lounge, noticing as I did so that the lobby was already busy with businessmen - and they did all appear to be men - checking out. I relaxed in the room for a bit before making use of fast checkout myself.
I made my way to Zone F of Terminal 3 via the Heathrow Connect and the underground walkway. Check-in was easy, but upstairs at Security the so-called fast track was painfully slow. Eventually I settled into the plain, overcrowded and decidedly underwhelming Admiral's Club Flagship Lounge. Too lazy to move to the British Airways lounge, I just hoped that the onboard experience would be better than this and took a long, slow walk to the gate somewhat earlier than really necessary.
(Link to flight log in side panel)
Well, well, well - who'd have thought? My flight to Los Angeles had featured a new and competition-trouncing hard product in Business Class. Sure, the service still had a few rough edges, but I was in no doubt at all that I would need to pause and take stock of the rapidly altering landscape in transatlantic travel. For the second day running, I was transferred to the terminal in an overcrowded bus, made worse on this occasion by people seemingly forgetting that they were wearing backpacks. Immigration, on the other hand, was an absolute dream. I walked straight to the front of the waiting area for visitors and in the two minutes that I had to wait there, not a single other person joined me. It seemed that I'd been on a plane loaded with homecoming Americans.
The straight-to-the-front experience was repeated when I eventually got to the Avis depot. Given that this was another 'PTA' trip in which planes had already featured strongly and no fewer than three trains had so far played bit parts, it was time for the third mode of transport to make an appearance. I picked up my rental car and emerged into the daunting combination of darkness and the LA rush hour. I made it safely to the Long Beach Hilton despite multiple jams and a total of three routing errors, each of which I instantly realised and corrected at the first safe opportunity.
My second hotel turned out to be a spacious and typically North American property with just a touch of grandeur about it. I was given a nice upgrade to a King corner room with balcony on the Executive Floor. Starting to feel a little peckish again, I had a light meal of Caesar salad with 'jumbo' crabcake in the lobby bar, washed down with a Bud. I went to bed at 8:30pm local time and fell instantly asleep, having been up for nearly 23 hours.