Usually when I’m on vacation, I don’t want to have a plan. I really like to just play it all by ear. Every other day of my life is so calculated, scheduled, time boxed, I like to let vacations take me wherever they end up taking me. Today, however, I had a plane to catch so I mapped out my entire route and when I’d be where. It really was a waste of time because nothing went as planned (other than my alarm waking me up right at 8AM).
My Plan
- 9:45AM: start Buckingham Palace tour (really just wanted to see pretty things)
- 11AM: find spot to view changing of the guard @ Buckingham Palace
- 11:30AM: changing of the guard
- 12:20PM: Victoria station
- 12:30PM: leave Victoria station on 12:30 train to Gatwick airport
- 1:00PM: arrive @ airport (2 hours is sufficient, right?)
- 1:10PM: bag check, visa check, security check
- 2:15PM: in “cattle herd line”
- 2:30PM: gate closes
- 3PM: flight departs
Reality
- First, I didn’t realize the Buckingham palace tour was 3 hrs long. I’ll have to save that tour for another time.
- I waited for the changing of the guard to happen – was about an hour and a half early, but based on large number of people gathering, decided to stick around and wait it out. Around 10:30, they started arranging the crowd in a very unorganized fashion. Using mounted police, they pushed the crowds to the side and opened up the main drag where the guard arrives. We were constantly warned of pickpockets by the police. Having already checked out of the hotel, I had both my backpack and luggage with me. Not easy to keep track of both in that crowd, but managed. The entrance of the guard, band, etc. was very regal. I wonder what that costs to do on a daily/every other day basis? And who’s paying for it? Only really saw the guards, band, and horses coming in because there were so many people. Don’t people have jobs?!? I guess it is tourist season… Either way, it was very cool and impressive.
- At quarter to noon, I made my way to Victoria station, where I would hop on a 12:30 train to Gatwick airport. When I arrived (on time, according to plan), I was told by some random person there were no trains to Gatwick because of serious signal failure. I could only guess what that meant. I would have to take a bus or taxi. I wandered around trying to find out more info from the people wearing the ginormous “i” on their belly and happened to find someone who said there was a train on platform 17. Found ticket kiosk, bought ticket, found platform 17. No train. It had already left. Over loudspeaker they announced a train to Gatwick was leaving from platform 13. That one was also gone. But I did happen to find another one leaving from platform 14 at 1PM (which actually was still at the platform).
- Train leaves Victoria station at 1PM. About 10 minutes into the trip, I am told my train ticket is not the right Gatwick train ticket (I bought the only one I had the option to buy; just so happened to be the cheapest). So I had to upgrade the ticket. At least I wasn’t kicked off (Not that the thought crossed my mind or anything. Really it didn’t).
- Arrived at the airport at 1:30PM
- Got in the bag check/visa check line. A long line. I think most of us were headed for Shannon because there were lots of worried people.
- 30 minutes later, I was looking for the end of the security line. I kept walking and walking. And walking some more. And some more. By the time I walked nearly the entire way around the airport, I found the end of the line. Which just so happened to be about 30 feet from the beginning (it just wound around the entire airport first). I cannot figure out how a line could be that bad. It was more than obnoxiously long. It was comical.
- When 2:30PM rolled around, the security line guy with the “i” pushed me to the front of the line (anyone who’s flight was taking off within 30 minutes got to skip to the front). Or very near the front.
- By 2:50PM I was running to gate along with the other people headed to Shannon, listening to the loudspeaker as they told us the gate was closing
- At 3PM, I arrived at the gate. And got in line. Again.
- 3:10PM I was in row 2 in an aisle seat – score!
- I definitely wasn’t the last one on the plane. We took off at 3:30PM. And Ryanair is 95% on time (no thanks to me). The couple sitting next to me said that Gatwick is historically bad, but today was worse than normal.
Lesson learned: Never fly out of Gatwick airport.
Maybe I should just double my estimates. Or have a contingency plan.
Will have more photos to post on Flickr later this week.