And a Month Later--Travel Notes!

We have returned from our sojourn in the Emerald Isle. Our children survived the flights, which is a miracle considering that DS was probably the most unhappy child I have ever seen on a plane, and there were probably any number of addlepated adults who were cheerfully contemplating strangling him on hour 2 of him screaming at the top of his lungs. *draws the curtain over that dark chapter of our lives*

*ahem* Here are a few travel observations about that illustrious airport, often held up as a pantheon of the Traveler's Airport, Heathrow.

First, the journey from the States to London. We arrived utterly sleepless at Heathrow's Terminal 4, and had to transfer from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1. Our children had slept about four hours total of the nine plus hour flight, so suffice it to say, we were a bit tetchy. We followed all the signs for "Connecting Flights", walking about a mile through endless labyrinthine passageways before we arrived at the inter-terminal transit option--a bus. Oh joy. Because having to divert endlessly to find elevators (aka "lifts") was not enough hassle--now we had to heft the carseats on the GoGo travel wheels with the children in them onto the bus. A kneeling bus, I might add, which the bus driver pointedly chose not to kneel to assist us. That had DH complaining a bit, I can tell you.

Now, we had gotten from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, but we had not gone through any sort of passport check or Customs, nothing. We were a bit bemused by this, as there were several points along the journey at which we could have just wandered off and evaded passport control and customs entirely. And there were no signs indicating that we were actually going to encounter Customs or Passport Control, which made us a bit nervous. We did eventually encounter them, but then we had to go through security, again. I ask you, what is the point of making connecting travelers go through airport security again? I cannot fathom any point other than the sadistic leanings of some bureaucratic airport controller who secretly delights in watching weary parents juggle all their carseats & children & peripheral electronics (to keep the children happy en route) through metal detectors and hand screening of the carseats. And we found ourselves finally through security and blearily eyeing the screens in the terminal to determine which gate we would be at for our flight to Dublin.

To add to the fun of security, the British have added another layer, called "Biometric Security". This consisted of us having our pictures taken in one part of the airport, and then we had to have someone match us to our pictures before we were completely through security. Which would have been fine, except the woman taking my picture and DS' picture had difficulty with her camera, so we had to stand there for about fifteen minutes while she tried to get her computer and camera to cooperate. And she took about ten different pictures of DS in his carseat, until she finally admitted the camera couldn't focus properly on him at that (low) height, and could we please take him out & hold him up for the camera? Grrrr. And then, when we got to where they check your pictures, that screener couldn't find my picture. At all. We had to stand there for over twenty minutes while this woman consulted her peers, dabbled around on the computer, and searched through picture files by timestamp until she finally found me...only to lose the photo again when she tried to clear me through. Can we say, "eye tic"?

Now I don't know how many of you have flown internationally, but it is a common practice at British airports to not tell you the departure gate when you receive your boarding pass. Instead, you have to periodically check large screens to see which gate has been assigned to your flight. Having just come from a 9 plus hour flight, and spent nearly 2 hours navigating through Heathrow airport and all of their incompetent security screeners, all we wanted was to get some food into ourselves and our children before we had to be at our gate in 30-40 minutes. However, this was apparently too much to ask of airport planners. I remember reading about Heathrow making efforts to offer only healthy food, and my hazy memory thought they might have banned fast food...but at that juncture, trying desperately to find a place to eat in a short timeframe, I was ready to cheerfully choke the Do Gooders who thought it was a good idea to remove any and all fast food options. A sandwich chain anywhere? Some sort of helpful signs pointing toward "food on the go"? Nope! Just a collection of sit-down restaurants offering items that would take at least 20 minutes to receive, which was not good enough. We bought chips (crisps) and candy and water at a newsagents' shop, and made do with that.

We had the same problem on our return through Terminal 4. Two, just TWO, sit-down restaurants available, and at one of those the waitresses didn't even bother to say "hello" or "be right with you" while we stood at the "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign for five minutes. By the time we had cruised down to the OTHER END OF THE TERMINAL to the other restaurant, we had no time to eat. Again with the crisps and water/sodas. Is it really too much to ask that parents have ONE fast food option, where their kids can get something reasonably familiar after a multitude of hours on an unfamiliar plane with unfamiliar food? I mean, really, it's not like people are going to be rushing to the AIRPORT to visit McDonald's! It's just for TRAVELERS, for goodness sake! But hey, if you wanted to buy a Mulberry handbag or some jewelry from Asprey, Terminal 4 was the place for you! Because, you know, it's more important to cater to the 0.5% of travelers with tons of cash, than the hoardes of common peasants who just want a quick meal. *eye tic*

I'm not even discussing the complete failure of Aer Lingus to offer pre-boarding for parents with small children, or their insistence on seeing the line in our carseat manual stating that they were certified for use on airplanes, or the radar problems at Dublin Airport that resulted in our flight from London to Dublin being delayed. And I've not mentioned the complete lack of common sense that has travelers from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 boarding an efficient train, then to be dumped into a lobby with only four elevators to carry a whole trainload of passengers up to the rest of the terminal. Yep, no stairs, no escalators...just 4 elevators. And that brings up the intelligence test that was routinely flunked by our fellow travelers, who kept pushing the elevator button before the full elevator had departed, resulting in continued delay. Yep, traveling. Good times. I hope I don't ever have to go through Heathrow again, and you can bet I'm sending some feedback their way...and it's not of a complimentary nature. Stay the he## away from Heathrow peeps. Seriously. Gatwick was WAAAAAY better. That will be my first choice from now on.