So as the title suggests, my 9.5 hour stay at Heathrow International Airport was less than optimal. We finally touched down at 9:20 GMT after a long but uneventful flight which was spent chatting intermittently with the tow people seated on either side of me. Thankfully there was a pleasant lack of screaming babies and sick old people so all in all the flight wasn't half bad. Finally saw x-Men origins or whatever the hell that wolverine movie was. Upon landing though, I realized that perhaps thing were slightly amiss when i walked into a terminal building and it was all but hermetically sealed in preparation for some impending nuclear war.
As is customary in airports I was shuffled from point A to point B with as little time for loitering and possible trouble causing as was physically possible without them carrying me football style from terminal 4 to terminal 1. Though I landed at roughly 9:30.. my connecting flight to Belfast didn't leave until 6:50 the following morning. Most people would balk at such a layover but I intrepid explorer that I am was looking forward to time spent wandering leisurely through a lovely large airport in search of a place to get a mani pedi before my French Adventure.
Well, my first obstacle was immigration. A portal to freedom and in my mind nail care guarded by a belligerent little blonde gnome. I could tell he was a bit of a piss ant with a stick up his butt but I thought meh let the beaurocrat have his red tape and get out of there as soon as possible. Unfortunately what transpired felt like i was strapped to the front bumper of a car slowly hurtling towards a cement highway divider. He interrogated me and threatened me and I'll save you the gory details but wound up demanding that I have a return ticket and bank statement upon my return from France..... yea ok.
So as I wearily make my way from the little fiefdom of pissant 1.... I meander through terminal 1 where I will miserably be spending the next 9.5 hours since everything appears to be closed.... at the whopping late hour of 10:00 pm. Yea folks 10 pm and Heathrow airport is locked down for nuclear winter. after like half an hour of wandering i come upon a pay internet terminal where I buy credit so that I can bitch to Andrew about how much Heathrow is sucking. Well maybe 10 minutes into my internet session a security guard wanders over and demands to know how much longer I'll be at the terminal. Long story short within five minutes I'm being ordered away from my already paid for session and directed to gate 36. Mind you gate 36 is not where my flight is departing from. Apparently though it's policy at Heathrow to heard all the overnight passengers into one spot. I can only imagine this is to make it easier for terrorists to achieve maximum casualties.
Terminal 36 was possibly the least logical spot to herd all of us unlucky bastards. It had typical fluorescent lighting stiff narrow chairs and full blast air conditioning. Not to mention the fact that there was no access to food or water for the duration unless we wanted to drink out of the sink. Mercifully though,we were told that food p[laces may start to open as early as 5:30 AM... which was about as useful to me, whose flight was boarding at 6:15 AM at the other end of the terminal, as a polar bear... though at least I could have used a polar bear as a heat generator.
The many long cold and uncomfortable hours were eased slightly by a really chill kid named diego who was going back to jerz he and I chatted away and actually had quite a lovely time hanging out. Finally though the morning rolled around I had time for a coffee and a bottle of water before my BMI Baby flight to Belfast took off and at last I was in the air on the way to Belfast. I honestly couldn't tell you what the flight looked like I was so past tired I think I might have slipped into a coma for the duration. But I can tell you I had never ever been so happy to see the perpetual grey drizzle of a typical Northern Irish morning than I was at 8:50 August 17 when I finally reached my destination. That is until I realized that Heathrow screwed up again, their incompetence seeming to follow me to a whole other country. They lost one of my suitcases, of course the one with the working handle, and would have to send it to me once they found it. TYPICAL!.... Anyway, I survived.. if only barely and I can happily assure my Bahamian comrades that there were no terrorist threats of any sort made by me... out loud. ^_^
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