The Long Trip Home



Home Sweet home with Lupine blooming already.
Bucolic magic

 

Here we are with Captain Ferguson and his Air Canada crew taking the shuttle
to Heathrow.



Heathrow is enormous but the construction continues

 

Not displayed but stacked in a row

We were fortunate to get a ride with Dick and his crew on the Air Canada shuttle to Heathrow, VIP treatment.  Lucky for us as we have baggage that is not too easy on the tube. Air Canada occupies 190 rooms daily at Danubius Hotel.  They have an Air Canada concierge. Heathrow can be quite daunting to say the least but with Continental and United now merged, there was a lack of information.
Our tickets said Continental so at our drop off, we took the train to terminal 4 where Continental is located.
I got the e-tickets, no problem , but after an hour we were concerned that Continental had not opened their counter.  After some investigating I saw a row of signs- not displayed but stacked together.  One of the signs said that certain cities (including ours) would  depart out of the United Terminal 1.  The train was down and not operating for 15 minutes but thanks to our 'ride' with Air Canada, we arrived early and had time. Chicago airport where we connected was pure bedlam.  There were lines and lines of people waiting to rebook their canceled flight.  This was the first time in 20 or 30 years that Continental has flown Chicago and there was mass confusion.  Our flight was an hour late and we had one bag missing at the end.  By the way, I was not impressed with the United flight versus the Continental flight that we left on, I missed the big screen TV and unlimited movies.  We were fortunate to have our ride waiting, Jill, and a place to overnight with Jill and Scott as it was midnight by the time we got to their house.  Much easier to drive up the mountain tomorrow.
The world is a crowded place, the check in lines are longer, the planes are bigger, the tourist and business travel numbers larger.  It does require traveling with animo!!! It has been a great trip.





Berthoud pass looks different than 4 weeks ago.
The lake is still filling

I will post the missing blogs, St. Petersburg and Helsinki as well as a post trip comment .