A Day Spent at Heathrow Airport, London

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

London, UK

A Day Spent at Heathrow Airport

My Virgin Atlantic Airlines flight from New York arrived at London’s Heathrow airport at 11.00 am local time. I was excited as I thought that although I was landing at Terminal 4, I could make my way to Terminal 5 which is far more interesting in terms of shopping (even if it is window-shopping) than any of the others. I had about 7 hours to kill during a long layover—so you can imagine I needed exciting things to do.

As it turned out, I was not able to change terminals and the huge errand I hoped I could do at Jo Malone turned out to be a damp squib as (long story short), the spending vouchers I had received from Virgin Atlantic for offering to be bumped off a flight, could not actually be used at the Duty Free Shops. I was determined not to give up and I went to a Virgin Atlantic help counter and discovered that what I could do was use the voucher to recover cash from a bank cash machine! Well, that was even better. An assistant walked with me to the cash machine and I was able to recover 250 pounds—that’s more than $300. Now I felt flush. But it gave me pause to ask myself: did I really need another bottle of perfume? So I decided not to spend the money but to take it over to India. It would stand us in good stead on our next travels in the UK.

whole issue took me over two hours to sort out—so quite a lot of my time was taken there. Next, I began browsing through the duty free shops—perfume, clothing, jewelry, even booze. But I already had two bottles in my suitcases and I did not want to get into any trouble, so I refrained from buying anymore. Anyway, after a while, I felt the need to sit down and that’s what I did. I bought a Meal Deal from Boot’s which consisted of a Chicken Selection sandwich pack with 3 types of chicken sandwiches (all delicious), a chocolate milk shake and a dessert: a New York Cheesecake in a small glass bowl (which I was very happy to bring home for serving dips, etc). It is now a happy souvenir of my long layover in London, So overall, I can say I had a good time. There were souvenir shops to look at—I ended up buying tins of British tea for my maid Pushpa, for my Dad’s Man Friday Rohit and kept one tin for us. Then, I browsed through the book shops and leafed through a few books. It is amazing how many ways one can pass time before one gets really tired on one’s feet. Of course, I also spent a lot of time chatting with my friends in England and to Llew in Bombay.

When boarding was announced, I made my way to the gate and in a little while, I was on the aircraft once again. The flight was empty. All of us had stretcher seats, by which I mean that we could change seats once the seat belt signs were off and find places on the aircraft where three or four seats were in a row so that we could stretch out and sleep.

I had a window seat and, for me, the best part of this flight, was that I could see the moon on my right hand side at the very front of the aircraft. As the miles were swallowed over Europe and the Middle East, the moon traveled across the sky until it was literally right outside my window. It turned out to be a really large, full and luminous moon. Only the next day I realized that it was a Blue Moon from which we get the phrase, “Once in a Blue Moon”. This kind of moon is rare—because usually there are 12 full moons in a lunar year –one full moon appears every 28 days. But every three years, there are 13 lunar months in a calendar year and a 13th full moon appears. This is known as a Supermoon or a Blue Moon. And I was so lucky to see one while already way up high in the air! You can just imagine how thrilled I was. Sadly, my camera could not capture its glory. It will forever stay in my memory as one of those rare things about which one can boast in one’s lifetime.

on flight were good, entertainment was engrossing. I watched a movie and then a couple of TV shows and all the while, I used my window seat to take pictures of the world below me—most of which was in darkness.

We arrived in Bombay at 8.25 am. I was pleased to see that since it was the middle of the monsoon, the Indian sub-continent was green all over (like England). Most times when landing in India, one notices how brown or yellow it is--so dry and arid. This time, it was so much more pleasing.

I got off the flight, had no trouble with immigration and my baggage and went straight to the pre-paid taxis from where I got one in no time. It was simply great to be back home again and to see the familiar sights of lovely Bandra and then my building and then, of course, Llew.

My long travels of five weeks had come to an end and I was happy to spend some time processing every wonderful experience through which I had lived.

Until I leave my Roost to take on a different part of the world again, I wish you happy days—and may the road rise up to meet you!