Tag Archives: honey moon

Daily Scribble

Heathrow

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London Heathrow Airport is probably the worst airport in the world.  I read from the news that on average 6% of luggage is lost every year and 20% of flights are delayed in Heathrow.  A few years ago, Heathrow lost my luggage and it took almost a month for airline to locate it.  I am taking BA for my honey moon to Rome, so I have to take a transfer at London.  I thought the new T-5 terminal would have some improvement to the airport, it turns out to be worse.

On my way there, I have the most horrable airport experience.  The plumbing system of T-5 is broken, there is no flushing tiolet.  The airport is really stinky and janitors has to carry bucket of water to flush the toilet after each use.  It is even worse than Indian’s airport, at least airport in India has running water.  (no tiolet paper though).  On my way back, the tiolet is working, but I was stucked in the plane for two hours waiting to take off.  The pilot claim because of bad weather, 85 flights is queueing up for the runway.  Luckily my luggage is not lost this time.

Even if the broken toilets and flight delays are just accidents, there are fundamental problems with Heathrow’s operation and design.  Passangers have to walk a long way and queue up for the custom just merely staying in the airport for the transfer.  One thing I don’t quite understand is the gate number assignment in Heathrow.  Airport around the world assign gate number for each flight far ahead of time.  Usually when you print your boarding pass, you already know which gate to board.  In Heathrow, they keep the gate secret until the very minute.  The moment you see the gate number show up in the display, you should get moving to the gate so that you won’t miss the flight.  Everyone ends up waiting in the common area and create a huge crowd.  One thing that is even more stupid is the new T-5 has 3 buildings connected by an underground light rail.  Going from A gates to B gates is a one way street.  Once you arrive in the B gates building, there is no way for you to go back to the A gates building.  Passenagers can only go to the B gates once their gate number shows up in the display, which is almost time to board.  As a result, passenagers won’t able to spent anything in the B gates shops.  Then why the airport have shops and even a resturant in the B gates building.  I feel sorry for those who open a shop in the B gates building, I don’t see a single customer in those shops, everyone is lining up to board.

Daily Scribble

Honey Moon Planning

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Honey moon is the most important part of getting marry.  The wedding day is more an event for family and friends, and for the formality and paper works.  The honey moon is the enjoying experience for the newly wed couple.  I am assigned the task of planning our honey moon.

Pat want to have the real papal blessing from the Pope, Rome has to be in the itinerary.  Yes, it is the real papal blessing from the Pope, face to face, not just a phony piece of paper.  We know at least two couples got the real papal blessing, we just have to go through the paper work with the Church.  I want to relax in the honey moon, so no back packing style city hopping.  Package guided tour is out of question, since it won’t work with our papal blessing schedule.  With so many constraints, I come up with a perfect itinerary.

Fly to Rome, stay there for a few days, then take Mediterranean cruise.  We will let the ship take us to visit different cities.  I already narrow my decisions down to two choices.  A 7 nights Royal Caribbean cruise or a 10 nights Celebrity cruise.  Both are round trip cruise boarding from Rome, so the traveling is minimal.  Since the ship return to Rome on 5a.m., we can go straight to the airport and catch the 12:30p.m. return flight to Vancouver.  The question is should I trade 2 extra days in Rome with visiting 3 more ports.