Just got back from my trip. Not quite what I was expecting.

Heathrow T1 was a zoo. The check-in staff just laughed when I showed them voucher, saying use them some other time. My partner's booking caused some sort of problem and she had to go over to another desk to clear it. She then came back and said we won't be sitting together as they had cancelled the previous flight. A tad annoyed but it was only a LHR-AMS flight.

The lounge (Diamond) was a bit run down. Could do with a good cleaning I thought.

Boarded the flight and thought I heard the purser say on the speaker to sit anywhere you want went to my allocated seat and found somebody in it. Three girls all piped up "It's free seating!!". I know BMI had gone low cost, but I didn't realise it was emulating sleazyjet and co. If I'd wanted to fight for a seat I would of flown with them. There were 2 Dutch businessmen who, even from my limited Dutch, were not very pleased with this. The flight was then delayed because they had one more on board than ticketed for and asked every one to check if they actually wanted to go to Amsterdam!! Finally took off 25 mins late.

Coming home today check in at AMS was a bit easier. She knew what to do with the vouchers but told us the flight was half an hour late. Fair enough, we'll spend it in the lounge. Went to find it and it was in the Shengen part of the terminal. Couldn't be bothered with passport control again so opted for the shops. Went to the gate and asked about the upgrades. He rang through and cleared them, but wrote "possible no food" on the card. Not much point really then was there? Thought we'd chance it. While talking to him noticed the time had changed for the flight to 90 mins late. This time we decided to go to the lounge.

Immigration asked why we were going through so had to explain. The lounge was nice though. Its let down was the lack of variety of snacks. The staff came over and told us our flight had been cancelled and took our boarding passes. She called control and had them prepare new BPs for us. Very commendable!! ^ Get to the flight and all's ok (except we are now 2 hours behind what I'd planned, which for a 40 min flight is poor - although my record is 6 hours late with KLM). The food service starts but it's just tea and biscuits as it's now 3.40pm I did see some boxes in row 1 but they weren't offered to anyone else. After the tea the purser came round with more drinks and apologised to us as he realised we were on the earlier lunchtime flight, and they had only catered the flight for 4 in business as that's all that were on the original flight (it was full now). However, 2 people had refused their meals and asked if we would like them. As we were kind of famished at that point we said yes. Lucky for us those 2 refused and that the purser was kind enough to offer them to us. ^ ^ I guess the others in the cabin were op-ups.

To top off my travel experience this trip, it was the first time since 11 years ago that I have been stopped at Heathrow by Customs and had my bagged searched!! Luckily the only Dutch things I was only importing orchids and tulip bulps - this time!