Having a friend living in India, and with enough VS miles for my first UC trip on them, we hatched a plan last September for me to travel to India in February, do some tiger watching, and generally holiday out there.
Life intervened. My friend was moved to the UK by his company for a while, meaning the trip had to be postponed. Correctly interpreting that the time period his company were suggesting would be elongated, I amended the ticket to the limits of its eligibility (thanks to some great help from the Indian call centre, who found out which flights had seats available before transferring me to the UC call centre, who actually made the changes on my behalf), and the trip was moved to September 2010.
More life intervened, meaning that due to illness, the doctor finally gave me the ok to go two days before I was due to depart
Because I'm not London based, I also had the problems of split PNRs, so even though the DEL flight was a 2200 departure, I came down the night before, and overnighted. In the event, with my illness, this broke the outbound into easily manageable bite-sized chunks - going EDI-LHR-DEL in one day, non-stop, would likely have set me back again
So, I left work early on Wednesday, 8th of September, to go home and pack, and then drive to EDI, for BA 1463. Standard BA domestic, the only thing of note was the fact that I was able to eat the savoury snack without musing as to how anyone could possibly think that that particular combination of foods went together - the much hated 'bird-seed' was no more, and instead their evening 'snack' was a packet of random nibbles which was almost edible.
An overnight at the Radisson Edwardian (where, with that ridiculousness you sometimes encounter with hotels, a B&B rate was £60 less than what any of the LHR HIs were asking
), and the lovely reception lady had given me a 2 pm check-out. Nice hotel, nice breakfast, would happily stay there again. Although to be honest, I can't really remember too much about it, except for the friendliness of the lovely reception lady.
I arrived at the airport about 1445, and sat outside in the sunshine for a bit, trying to avoid the cigarette smoke blowing around the plaza, aware of just how early I was for the flight, wanting to spend a decent amount of time in the Clubhouse, but also aware that there are limits!
It's been a while since I flew out of T3 - and I was not surprised to see much of it little changed, and still as unlovely, dark and dingy as ever. In that way that too much flying starts to blur in your mind, I'd been unsure if I ever had - but the low, black ceiling, the feelings of claustrophobia, and the sighting of a TK check-in desk assured me I most definitely had.
Still, nothing daunted, I was UC, and entitled to a better class of Terminal. So I took myself off to the UC check-in desk. For once, since I had a seat reserved, I decided not to do OLCI or SSCI, but instead do it the old-fashioned way at the airport. Perk of J
An inquiry to the UC concierge as to how early I could check in for DEL assured me I could do it now (only about 6.5 hours before departure - kudos for an airline which does that, since it can be hard to manage!), so I did. Check-in was empty, staff were lovely, friendly and welcoming and I was quickly on my way, clutching my pass for 1K, my pre-selected seat.
I liked the private security channel, even though in the best tradition of travellers anywhere, I'd only been half-listening when they told me where to go, so had to guess due to slightly unclear signage (that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it), but guessed correctly.
I was the only person going through. A request for a bag (I'd last minute decided to carry on some moisturiser) caused problems before a compromise was reached, and staff took a common sense decision which, while not exactly within the letter of the rules did prove that the little plastic bag is not, in itself, an essential part of the security checks so long as you are honest in advance
A quick stroll around the delights which are T3 duty free (girls cannot survive without chocolate, although the absence of any Hotel du Chocolat products, such as can be found in T5 was a disappointment I will admit!), and then I took myself off the Clubhouse.
Now, some might argue about 6 hours is probably too long to spend in a lounge - I'd say that properly prepared (i.e. carrying swimmy cossie), and for a first visit to the Clubhouse, it was about perfect. It gave me the opportunity to
- book a facial
- have lunch from the deli bar
- have dinner from the a la carte
- enjoy several cocktails (which might explain the haziness of the recollections
)
- enjoy the spa pool etc
- play online - be grateful I didn't start a PUTI thread
- sit outside some more enjoying the sunshine, the roar of the aircraft and the smell of the aviation fuel
- keep posting updates on facebook telling everyone what I was doing. My friends, all at work, seemed to greatly appreciate this
In short, I loved the Clubhouse. Staff were brilliant, they loved my travel companion, and I was able to scrounge hair products from the hair dresser (and a hair brush!) post spa pool - definite advantage to have a hair salon in lounge
Food was good and tasty, cocktails distinctly moreish. I thought the decor was fun, quirky and very VS! The CH was quiet when I arrived, but picked up for the evening flights out, then quietened down again, before eventually the DEL departure was called. I gathered up my belongings, and Tamsin and left for the plane.
(and I'll leave it there just now. Sorry, I do loquacious trip reports - I'll try and get a few photos up this evening as well!).