flyer200

Yes, I can understand that. WT+ upgrades are the bane of my working travel. SH makes more sense I suppose.

bisonrav

Another 80 TP safely procured by means of a work trip to Bologna. In fact the work booking would have been 15, but I took a POUG following a bonus as I was feeling flush,

The trip out was one where the God of delay was smirking at me, capriciously. First off, I decided to give Purple Parking a go - it looked inexpensive. Of this choice more later, but the first thing to happen was that my in car sat nav had a complete brain fade and sent me to somewhere in the vicinity of Twickenham. Ahah, I thought, it's next to the Premier Inn. So I selected that as a local PoI and it sent me to Richmond I think (no Premier Inn anywhere in site when "you have reached your destination"). So cursing in rather a loud voice, I switched to google maps on the iPhone, and that got me there. Reasonably efficient transfer to T5, but I lost an hour driving around, though fortunately had left some extra time.

I had left some extra time because I wanted to visit Dixons to buy one of my sons his 18th birthday present, a Nintendo Switch, and in the process unlock my wife's Heathrow Rewards bonus. But as I had a miraculously empty Gold Wing experience, I started by gulping down a quick BA burger before heading off to Dixons. The downstairs one sent me upstairs, the upstairs one told me that yes they had one, then disappeared for ten minutes before returning with nothing. By this time it was pushing boarding time, so I headed to the gate.

Boarding proceeded very quickly, we got onboard, the doors closed, and the captain announced a 90 minute delay because of the French ATC strike. At this point I gave up and went to sleep. I was woken by the familiar sound of the BA safety video and a little nudge from the FA. Another reason for choosing row 1 is that it's very convenient for being nudged by a FA if you look like you might sleep through the safety video.

Otherwise a very good flight, excellent CSM of the slight camp and chatty variety, I explained it was the 62nd flight of the year and he wondered whether he'd done that many. Lovely bloke anyway.

Then the final act - the Hotel Meeting in Bologna. Look it up on trip advisor. It's slightly special, and it didn't help that I arrived after a delivery of about 600 Chinese tourists who were in front of me at check in. Fortunately they had a group arrangement, but it was some time before the receptionist (I shall call him Basil) got round to checking me in. The comments in trip advisor are perhaps a little harsh, but it does reek of shake n vac ("that's all you have to do..."). I slept well all the same, I was knackered.

Picked up by a colleague and off to an automation fair in Parma, very good day. Italy is not what you would call a feminist bastion, and there is a preponderance of young girls in tight skirts and stiletto heels which does cheer up the process of wandering around a few hundred stalls where companies profess they are passionate about variable speed drive technologies. Oh, and one naked girl whom you could body paint on request if you allowed your visitor badge to be scanned. I didn't.

The trip back to the airport was the most terrified I've ever been in a car, even the time when a Chinese driver dropped off on the way from Shanghai airport, or in India, or in Jakarta. It was an Italian colleague. It was stormy with heavy showers. We were about two feet from a hard concrete barrier on the left hand side of the fast lane. He was driving at 150 kmph, quite aggressively (I can deal with that). But just to make things a little more interesting, he started reading his email on his phone and making calls. Not hands free. It's difficult to know what to do when it's a colleague - had it been a cab I'd have told him to stop and reported him. So I resorted to stoic butt clenched silence. And we got there without a collision, God knows how.

Bologna airport. What can I say? I was chatting to the PHX group on WhatsApp and concluded it was the worst lounge I've ever been in. It's landside (no problem) and as a plus they give you a fast track voucher. But there's nothing to stay there for apart from cold pizza, thimblefuls of cold pasta draped in watercress, and some horrific ham sandwiches. The coffee is however good. I took my leave of that fairly quickly and went to the gate. There was this bloke who was evidently keen to get on, because he started queuing in the 123 lane about an hour before the flight, well before the incoming flight had arrived. So inevitably a little queue formed behind him. Amusingly, Bologna played a blinder on the priority boarding, announced group 1 only, at which I walked right past the queue, smug grin attached.

Onto the bus.

For it was a bus gate. I also failed to anticipate the right side of the bus for boarding, so ended up boarding somewhere at the end of the first group. Ah well.

Good flight, matronly CSM who addressed the FAs at the back as "trouble"on the phone. Very good at keeping drinks (well, tea, I rivalled CWS on this flight) topped up. The only irritation was that the buggers in the back got the idea they could use the CE toilets about half way through, after which there was a constant stream of them.

And then on landing, the captain announced that he would not be turning the seatbelts off because we would be being met by police who needed to remove a passenger. There was a light buzz of excitement at the prospect of a desperate shoot out, but in the event all that happened was that the passenger was asked to make himself known and come to the front, where he was apprehended by a couple of burly PCs. Last seen being read his rights on the end of the airbridge.

And then (and yes, this is a lot of detail for an overnight trip) back to Purple Parking. And I was not impressed. The seat had been messed with - bear in mind they only needed to park it, no problem with that, but the seat had been moved down and back and the recline altered. The aircon settings had been changed and the mirrors moved. And there seemed to be a considerable difference between the range estimate I'd left it with and the one I've picked up. I didn't record the Odometer, and I can't prove it was driven while I was away, but I won't be using them again just on the basis of the setting changes. Business parking for me all the way from here.

And that, following a drive home, is that. Next flight is a family holiday in CE to Funchal in a couple of weeks, which should take me over the 3000 point mark.

MarkedMan

The things I have seen people do while driving cars in Italy can't properly be written up. Playing with phones is pretty low in the list. I am grateful I got my drivers' license there, I don't think I will ever be truly worried driving anywhere.

As for lounges, try PSA. Or any number of small airport facilities in Italy. Or PRG. Etc etc. At least BLQ has a half decent bar with real coffee, and for all its mediocrity the security facility straight from the lounge is a rarity and a real boon. PSA was for a long time a pokey hole with no proper seats (that part of the lounge is still there), then it added a space with couches. But the offering in terms of food&bev is hopeless. They used to stock Gordon's, Campari and Martini Rosso, so you could at least self pour a Negroni; they have now discontinued stocking the vermouth, so you can't even properly drown your sorrows. It's a home airport of sorts for me and I am at least grateful BA stuck with it (for a time I was half thinking Ryanair might wipe them out from the place entirely). The lounge space is diabolical.

Once you step down from vats of shapeless curry to dried out toasingt bread sandwiches sparsely populated with compressed pork leftovers and tasteless white stuff someone actually believes to be cheese, it's hard for me to make a quality comparison. The ghost has been given up. I look for redeeming features in a lounge, and BLQ's security arrangement is such a standout that I can handle the hour drive to the airport just fine when I have to do it.

bisonrav

Yes, the fast track at Bologna was excellent and all the more appreciated for being unexpected. It has a curious arrangement where some bags are pre-scanned on entry to the security door, seemingly at the whim of the guy at the door. In fairness there is also a restaurant airside for which the lounge will give you some kind of discount voucher, but I didn't bother with that. I'd already had a dry parma ham ever-so-slightly-warmed roll in one of the landside bars, plus cold pizza and pasta, and decided that with the BA panini to come I didn't need any more disappointment.

The real surprise though was the very well managed group boarding, albeit to the bus. You expect (possibly unfairly and on the basis of cultural stereotypes) less organisation in Italy.

mmxbreaks

Achieved this year's Gold renewal in 47 days, so reckon I could be in for a one-off GGL/CCR year following, all being well...

Mike P

Loving this thread. Is Bologna worth a visit?

bisonrav

I can't really judge that - it was a hit and run trip for an exhibition in Parma and I saw very little outside the hotel, car, and hall. But in the sense that this part of Italy is mostly always enjoyable for leisure, I should say it almost certainly is worth going to, albeit not for the airport experience. Florence isn't far away and definitely worth a trip.

One tangential exercise to log is that we spent Sunday in two aviation museums close to Gatwick, to the absolute delight of my toddler. These were the Gatwick Aviation Museum - mostly military based but with a nice display around the history of the airport. It's to the NE of the airport boundary just over the hedge from the fire training area and you can see the exterior displays on takeoff or landing. Would be very easy to get to on a short layover by taxi. The highlight is the Shackleton tour, given for us by a gruff but amiable Scot who had maintained the model around the world for the RAF and who had actually flown ops in the example on display. It's not exactly QR business class inside, but fascinating. There's also an Islander cockpit which the toddler spent about an hour playing in.

Then the second museum was "Wings" in Balcombe, about 20 minutes away from the first. This was much more about aviation archaeology and relics of crashed warplanes, and if anything was more interesting than the first. For some reason it really tickled the toddler's fancy, and he was running around explaining how all the broken planes could be fitted together if he was only allowed to do it. We literally had to drag him out with the bribe of ice cream.

Mike P

Thanks very much for the reply, glad you had a good time at the two museums, sounds like a fun trip out. I shall have a think about a weekend in BLQ.

MarkedMan

There are fewer better places to eat one's self silly in the world than Bologna. Lovely city, too. Frankly, all the cities between Bologna and Parma are worth a culinary trip, I have had some of the best ravioli in Modena and the fried and baked dough breads with the cold cuts and cheeses the region are so famous for ... all washed with good Lambrusco (yes, it exists).

Gnocco Fritto

and

Tigella

bisonrav

corporate-wage-slave

Bologna is unexpectedly interesting place to visit, with very few UK visitors. A nice compact centre and many interesting things to visit. You may want to look at the report from @Genius1 particularly the second post to get some idea of the city.
BA’s Old Club Europe for One Final Time (?) - Bologna and Florence (w/pics)

His hotel choice is amusing to me at least since my usual hotel there is a 1990s building in a industrial park, almost the polar opposite. Bologna also benefits from Italy's main railway junction which means that all sorts of places can be reached easily and quickly from there, indeed if going to places like Florence or Venice it can be quicker, door to door, via BLQ.

MarkedMan

That is indeed a nice trip report. Bologna and Florence are very compact, they are small cities, very similarly sized and with an obviously close history. In Florence you can walk from the St Regis, on the western end of the town centre, to Sant'Ambrogio on the eastern side, in 30 to forty minutes, wandering around medieval buildings and all that. Yet once you get oyut of the central areas you're somewhere from late 50s tro early 2000s hell, at least comparatively speaking. It's worth remembering these towns are somewhat like Coventry, they had a very tough time through world war two and it's a minor miracle that the old central areas didn't suffer more than they did (especially Florence, where the front was stationed for many years). Outside of that, between the ravages of war and an economy that was still essentially agricultural until the boom in the 50s, it's all new(ish). It's always worth remembering when picking a hotel in the two towns, as well as realising that even a new hotel on the outskirts is likely to be no more than 10 or 15 minutes, max, cab to the middle of town.

BLQ has all around better timings for flights and, especially if driving south, is perfectly positioned for the A1. I can get to a rental car at BLQ and be at my hometown in less than an hour, motorway traffic permitting. The train is a bit more of a pain to get to, but frankly I have spent thirty minutes at FLR waiting for the bus to the station in town, so in the end you're quite right. Life was much easier for us in the days when PSA had overnights, but that is long gone and not likely to come back.

Mike P

Thanks very much indeed for all the BLQ information and the link to @Genius1's excellent trip report. I think I may find myself there for a long weekend soon!

MarkedMan

You won't regret it. Or, again, any of the towns north on the old Via Emilia, Modena, Reggio and Parma.

bisonrav