Today is our day to head to London, but Maxine is not feeling well. Should we go? Should she stay home and rest for a day or two to recover? Can we change our tickets? Too bad we didn’t book the British Airways San Francisco to London non-stop.
We started the day by finishing our packing, taking Spencer to the kennel and going to Oakland to spend some time with the kiddies. We got some quality time with Avi, Hannah and Lily, but Dan spent the time upstairs in bed since he was fighting a cold too. At about 3pm, Maxine decided to see how she did on the flight, at least as far as our connection point in Los Angeles. We drove to SFO, parked in the long term lot and went to the American counter to check in. All went well, our bag was within weight limits, the seats we had pre-booked were there and the clerk handed us our boarding passes. I looked at them and noticed that our first flight, SFO to LAX was at that point already delayed such that our connection to London was a clear miss, and that was the last flight of the day.
I suggested that they rebook us on the British Air non-stop that was leaving in a couple of hours and would actually arrive before our LA flight. The clerk agreed and started the process, only then to notice that we were on award (free) tickets. It took her another 25 minutes on the phone and computer to make the rebooking. They also had to go in the back and find our checked bag so we could recheck it.
British Air was able to promptly check us in and found us seats together, even if they were middle seats. Since I have Platinum status on American, we got to us the BA executive lounge. That provided enough sandwiches and snacks to cover early dinner. The person in the lounge was even able to find us seats that included an aisle so we weren’t stuck in the middle.
The flight departed right on time and flight time was under 10 hours. Arrival in London was delayed by a few minutes of circling, but we were still on time. After we were off the plane, the real delay started. It took over an hour to get through the passport control lines. If you think that they would know how many planes are landing and staff passport control appropriately, you would be wrong. The good part is that after you have spent an hour in a snake line, your bags are waiting for your pick up. A quick (and expensive) taxi ride took us to our hotel, the Park Lane. Everything worked there and we were quickly in our room.
London was cold and damp so Maxine didn’t want to go out so room service provided dinner. Quite good and with the 50% off coupon, quite reasonable. As usual, the hardest part was staying awake until a reasonable time to try to offset the jetlag. Maxine had the additional problem of a hacking cough but did manage to get a little sleep.
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