Day 19 – London – Home

With only one flight and one bus to take today to get home from London we thought that day 19 would be a damp squid. However, it was far from it.

The best thing about waking up in the BLOC Hotel in Gatwick was that the departures lounge and security was right on our doorstep. After checking out, having breakfast outside Marks and Spencer and watching these two performers driving around as grannies on suitcases (don’t ask), we went through security to wait a few hours for our flight to Dublin.

When our gate was finally released on the big screens, that is when normality ended. Boarding our gate took extra long today because security were looking for a man getting our flight. We overheard security tell the check-in attendants “He hasn’t tried to board yet but when he turns up can you let us know”. Several minutes later, just outside the glass box which was our waiting area at the gate, we watched on as 2 police men with their big machine guns and 6 airport security personnel with their name tags questioned, searched and patted down this man. What looked like a serious incident turned out to be for nothing, as the man and his friend boarded our gate in stitches of laughter and in disbelief.

Our flight was already delayed but we finally got on our plane. The plane was not even half-full and people were asking to move seats before the hostess informed them that this plane was supposed to be full but did not know where everyone was. After 20 minutes or so, the plane had started to fill up once again with the reason being that the whole electronic system in Gatwick had shut down (due to the thunderstorms we thought) and no boarding passes could be scanned etc…

The thunderstorms continued to delay us whilst we sat on the plane metres from the runway. The pilot informed us that we needed to wait even longer for a thunderstorm to pass before we took off.

If this wasn’t enough, Virgin Atlantic flight 89 needed to make an emergency landing on the runway and so all flights in and out of Gatwick were put on hold with the runway closed. When it landed with a suspected hydraulic failure, it needed to be towed off and the whole tarmac checked for debris and oil. Finally, we were off, only 1hr45 behind schedule. Luckily, we were entertained by a group of 11 workmates in the rows in front of us. They had planned a ‘mad one’ in Dublin as they were all flying back at 7am the next morning. Anna got a glimpse of their itinerary and saw that they were supposed to be walking to Temple Bar right now, not still in Gatwick.

After a few circulations around Dublin airport, we eventually arrived without any more incident. The delays made our wait for the bus even shorter and within 30 minutes, we were on the bus home.

A 4hr bus journey was the last thing we both wanted though after almost 36hours of travel. At 10pm, we had reached our destination and after another long and fun-filled adventure, we were ready for a good night’s rest and get back to normality. However, it is absolutely freezing in Ireland – we are now used to 30 degrees!

Thanks for reading everyone. I’m sure we will be back soon! Τα λέμε.