Up and at ’em early in Brussels, out the door at 7:30 for our taxi to the airport. Right on time, and no traffic whatsoever, so we are at the airport before 8:00. Check in is crazy – you do your own bags at the express bag drop. We had mobile boarding passes so we just scanned our phones, affixed our luggage tags to the bags, and watched them go off down the luggage carousel. Yikes!
Immigration easy – except for I was trying to use the boarding pass scanner as a fingerprint scanner. Hey, at least I made the Immigration guy smile – first smile we saw from him while we were waiting in line watching.
Security fine, in the terminal with plenty of time to spare and at the gate (which wasn’t so easy to find) waiting to board at our appointed time. Flight was smooth – a little under an hour – no service unless you pay – needless to say we didn’t buy anything for such a short flight. Landing not so smooth, very windy, and as I said “tippy” – the wings kept tipping from side to side and I was extremely relieved when we finally touched down.
Immigration here took FOREVER! We didn’t have our entry forms (they didn’t give us any on the plane – guess we had to pay for that too! LOL), so we had to fill them out at Immigration, which could have been a huge problem if we didn’t rush. We just made it into the line before a couple of huge planes dumped non-EU passengers off into the line. Took us at least 1/2 hour to get through, and the people at the end of the line behind us were for sure going to be there an hour. Phew!
But, luggage was waiting (one benefit of the long line) and our driver was waiting and we sped off to Southampton. There was a wreck on the highway, so the driver took us the scenic route, behind Windsor castle and through some of the exclusive areas that Roger and Natalie had shown us when we were here in May. Funny that he’s taken us the same route!
We re-joined the highway and made good time to Southampton, but boy, once in the town, the traffic was stop and go. Crazy – our driver (who’s name we never got) said every Saturday is busy in Southampton because everyone comes to shop – and to add to it, a big football game was going on there as well. The number of people were amazing.
Checked into the hotel and got a high floor room (upgrade!) as well as free internet for being IHG members. Dumped our bags and headed to the grocery store for supplies – and of course it starts to pour down rain. Ick. We dove into the mall parking garage and decided to detour through the mall. OMG! The shopping, the people! Craziness! It was packed – and everyone had a bag or two or three. Wow! We were amazed.
We popped out the other side of the mall and made our way to the grocery store. Picked up beer/wine/cabin snacks then made our way back to the hotel, fortunately in between downpours.
Today happens to be Guy Fawkes day, and there are lots of festivities going on – including a festival in the park right across from the hotel. This includes fireworks at 7:45. We had planned to go to the Thai restaurant across the street – it gets great reviews and the menu was appealing. But then we realized the fireworks were right there behind the restaurant, so to be safe, we called. Good thing – they were booked solid and we would have hated to walk down there in the pouring rain and find out we couldn’t eat!
So we ended up eating in the hotel restaurant which was surprisingly good. Ed had mushroom soup and a Caesar salad with chicken, I had a hunter’s chicken with BBQ sauce, bacon and cheese on top. All very good and tasty. Plus, we could sit right there and watch the fireworks. All worked out beautifully!
Our room faced the port – so we escaped much of the festival noise (but we did enjoy the music when we had the window open!) – and we could watch for the Eclipse when she sailed in!
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