Türkiye & X TA 2022

We left family and friends in Türkiye behind this morning and are in England now … specifically in Southampton. Why? Because, instead of flying back to the USA, we’re cruising back there. Sure, it will take us two weeks to do so … but, we’re retired and have all the time in the world. Besides, booking a last minute cruise was so much less expensive than purchasing last minute airfare … and I don’t mean in business class, but in economy.

Anyway, our TransAtlantic cruise is still two days away. In the meantime, here’s the story of today … our travel day.

I must say that the Lufthansa/Eurowings strike that caused us to change our flight arrangements was a blessing in disguise. (And yes, the strike did begin yesterday … as announced.) What was to have taken us three flights and a bus ride to get to Southampton, took us two flights and a bus ride instead. And instead of arriving at our hotel shortly before midnight, we arrived around 9:00p. Much better.

Overall, our travel day was an uneventful one. Rather than having to start out at 3:00a to get to our first flight at 6:15a, we were able to get started at 6:00a … our usual wake up time. Formalities at neither ADB nor IST put up any barriers as we went through immigration and the security checkpoints in a jiffy. Both of the THY flights were on time. In fact, we arrived at LHR 25 minutes ahead of schedule. That was a mixed blessing, however, as we had to wait for our gate to clear before we could deplane.

Ten minutes! That’s all it took for us to get through immigration and arrive at baggage claim once we deplaned. A miracle … especially after the horror stories we were bombarded with in regards to LHR during the summer travel season. Thanks to our “chipped” US passports, we even skipped the face-to-face immigration formalities and instead used the automated kiosks to scan our documents. Easy peasy! Our bags did take about 20 minutes to show up. But show up they did.

The Central Station at LHR is a convenient way to get a bus from the airport to Southampton … most of the time … even with the convoluted route one must follow to get to the station to begin with. We’ve done this a couple of times over the years. Alas, this year there were some hurdles to negotiate.

We found the station easily enough, but because the ticket office has been replaced with automated machines, we ran into a bit of trouble trying to change our tickets to the earlier bus departing at 6:15p. Calling National Express, as we were instructed to do, just resulted in being placed on hold … with an expected wait time of 30 minutes. Nope … no can do. Not wanting to risk missing the early bus, we decided to just buy two more tickets and plead our case with the bus company later.

Thanks to the bus being delayed in jam-packed northbound traffic on its way to LHR, we made it on with time to spare. The drive was a comfortable one … the heavy traffic heading south from LHR flowing smoothly. In fact, despite the nearly 30-minute delay leaving Central Station, we arrived in Southampton just 10 minutes behind schedule.

We knew from past experience that Uber was our best shot at getting to the hotel from the Harbor Parade Station. Sure enough. Within 15 minutes of getting off the bus, we were checking in at the Southampton Holiday Inn … the hotel that is closest to the City Cruise Terminal from where we will be embarking our ship.

Room 502 — with a view of the harbor — is rather tight space-wise. The decor is a little tired and could use a refresh. Otherwise, everything is spic-and-span clean. The bed certainly seems comfortable enough. We’ll find out if that impression is accurate once we get properly settled for the night.Read more