With a 9:10 am flight, we decided to drive up on the Thursday night and stop at a hotel. Being as we weren’t going to spend too much time in the room we decided on the Aerotel Hotel which is actually in T3 itself. It is situated at the end of the arrivals hall with easy access to departures. The rooms are quite small and there are no windows but it was ideal for what we wanted given the time we were going to spend in it. The bed was very comfortable and we both had a reasonable nights sleep.
Given the time to year, and as we were walking through T3 arrivals to departures this morning, in my head I could hear Hugh Grant uttering the words….
“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.
As a result of this thought, I ended up watching Love Actually during the flight, a Christmas classic if you ask me.
Our flight out to Dubai was on an A380, the third time we had been on such a plane in just 3 weeks. We had a back-row seat in economy this time.
In hindsight, maybe we should have stayed in Dubai for 5 nights but it was lovely to go home and see family again briefly.
We had a reasonably comfortable flight and arrived at around 8:00pm local time. Immigration was swift and we were outside and in the free airport shuttle within 45 minutes. We have an overnight stay at the Millennium Airport Hotel before boarding the ship tomorrow. Our hotel room is the polar opposite of the one we left this morning, the bathroom itself is probably bigger than the whole of the footprint of the setup at Aerotel. From one extreme to the other.
After a few drinks in the outside bar, we turned in for the evening. Tomorrow we board Costa Toscana.
Love your Love Actually experience. I think of it every time we fly through LHR. The movie is a classic. We watch it every Christmas. Watched it the same night you did a few thousand miles away. Love the dichotomy of your rooms. An inside stateroom and then a suite. Can’t wait to see what you got on the ship.