Part 3.Popping the lounge cherry!
July 3rd, 2012
London Heathrow Airport
Terminal 1 Star Alliance Lounge
As I walked up to the lounge, I took an awkward picture of the entrance and proceeded to the dragon (luckily I didn’t experience why they were called that). I found that this whole picture-taking business took some getting used to, as I didn’t want to show my eagerness to the dull and tired passengers surrounding me. I believe I get some slack to the quality and amount of pictures as this is my first report.
My First!... That I’m actually using!
Personally, I loved the lounge, considering the alternate option was sitting in an uncomfortable gate chair paying 10 pounds for a bite to eat. But then, I was biased considering this was my first experience in any kind of non-soviet (more on that some other time) lounge.
A nice, relaxed, modern atmosphere
From the various trip-reports I’ve read, this seemed to be a fairly common Star Alliance lounge. It had a good selection of hot food for the morning including bacon, sausages, grilled tomatoes, toast and eggs. For the sake of this being a *report*- the bacon was over salted and I also found that eggs in a soup-canister don’t appeal to many, including me.
The hot breakfast selection. It's decent, if you can make it out!
The separate, non-hot food section had a selection of various deli-items, fruit-cups, yogurts, jams and croissants. The lounge had the usual soft drinks, non-fresh squeezed juices and hard liquor for those of you who like a buzz in the morning. I tried the orange juice, which tasted awful
I sat down in one of the many free seats around the lounge, connected my phone to the wi-fi, and started listing through various articles in the Economist.
The deli-corner of the lounge. I found the food here seemed better than around the corner
After attaining a quick background on the presidential campaigns of Romney and Obama, I was bored. My quick meal of a croissant with strawberry jam, and half an English Breakfast (sausages, bacon and “eggs”) was already digesting, so I decided to explore the lounge. I found there was most likely some sort of view behind some white shutter, however I decided not to bother the creatures of the lounge with any unnecessary sunshine. The lounge had showers, which I didn’t bother looking into as I had just come from home, but I made sure to take a picture of the sign!
Seeing there was nothing much to do, I headed over to the complementary internet-enabled computers and decided to browse facebook, and inform some of my friends on the status of my trip. The fact that internet was free was appreciated, as my phone seemed to be bugging out and my laptop had been broken for the past 2 months.
The Secluded Internet-Access Area... the blurring is an art form..
After my browsing-session, I took some discrete snapshots, not knowing what the opinion of other travellers and staff would be towards them. I decided it was time to go to the gate, so I didn’t miss any of my plane experiences.
I find that I’m always unlucky with where in the terminal my departing flight is. Not once have I had it that it was the first gate past security. So I walked, head high in the air knowing the impending flight would be awesome, and then I walked some more, seeing that our plane was literally the last one in the section of gates.
As I walked up, boarding had already commenced, so I wasn’t able to snap some pictures of the lovely Boeing 767-300 for you. In hindsight, I definitely had the time, but seeing the large economy queue, forced old habits and I went straight to the gate. Only this time straight to the front. To be completely honest, I knew that I had a cheeky grin on my face walking past everyone in Economy. I tried to control it, but couldn’t. I wonder what the looks on their faces must have been as I’m often the one being passed by people in the PremierAccess lanes and I don’t remember being happy about it.