This week sees me heading to Latvia for a flying visit to Riga. Never been to Latvia and have been looking forward to this trip for a while. Unfortunately I’ve been a little poorly this week so my energy levels are low and so ‘speedy’ may quickly become ‘slothlike’ as we go along.

with less than four hours to departure I’ve not even packed my suitcase yet, but the first job has been to check the seatmap for the flight and see if the seat block has held. My jaw almost hit the floor



I’ve never seen a NCL-LHR flight look like that. There is another departure one hour earlier that is showing as fairly well populated so I’m assuming this is correct and not an expertflyer glitch. Boarding should be quick!

Time to go pack my bags, next stop: Newcastle airport once more.

Previous Trip Reports

2024

Nov - Wey Aye! Newcastle for a day!

Oct - Bucharest - Again!
Oct - A very short weekend trip to Kuwait flying all 4 classes

Sep - San Jose CA and 15 flights in J and F, a 1,000 tier point run on BA/AA/AS/IB
Sep - The Edinburgh FT Do

Aug - Seven Flights to Stretch SAS Status
Aug - More Lounging Around - The Ultimate Lounge Safari Take 2
Aug - 24 Hours in Tirana: Another Day of Sights and Speedy Shenanigans!
Aug - A double LCC weekend jaunt to Malaga
Aug - 24 Hours in Graz: A Day of Sights and Speedy Shenanigans!

July - The Flyertalk Bristol Do
July - Hasty Valencia Visit: Tapas, Vermut, and the Joy of Impulse Adventures
July - A Frequent Flyer’s Frivolous Foodie Foray

June - Lounging around in London Heathrow: The ultimate BA T3 and T5 lounge safari
June - Santorini Sprint: 24 Hours of Sun, Sand, and Speedy Sightseeing
June - Red Tape and Red Buses: When paperwork takes flight
June - Toronto: Towering Heights, Delicious Bites, and Niagara Delights!
June - Preveza for points: An overnight adventure with JapesGPT

May - Flying High, Haggling Low: A BA holiday to Marrakesh
May - Spontaneous Sicilian Splendour. Palermo in a day

Apr - Sky High Shenanigans: 6 Days, 5 Destinations, and a Whole Lot of Boarding Passes!

Mar - Four days in Baku, an Azerbaijan adventure
Mar - BA Holidays 6 day tier point run
Mar - A.I. goes to Aberdeen

Feb - A trip to two continents - Istanbul
Feb - Back to Bucharest for a toothy treat

Jan - Going for gold in Malaga
Jan - A Milan day trip

2023

Dec - A Christmas Escapade, Washington and my first first
Dec - A Stockholm weekend
Dec - Brussels, no sprouts! A short hop for hops.
Dec - A LCC trip to Faro, curiosity and comparison

Nov - Gdansk and Wroclaw for beer and XP

Oct - Bucharest and Back - again, and again, and again
Oct - A Short Sibiu Sojourn

Sept - Birmingham, Business, and Balti
Sept - A Budapest Long Weekend
Sept - Krakow Kraziness

And here I am at a very very quiet Newcastle airport. There were three cars in the car park immediately in front of the airport, and security wait times were predicted to be 3 minutes.



The BA check in desks completely deserted



Security was a breeze even with the usual secondary swab of the iPad, maybe two minutes total.

And the departures hall was also very quiet



And to the lounge which is heaving! Looking around, there are maybe three unoccupied tables.

A devastating blow to my evening plans, Stella Artois has been replaced with Madri! Ah well, beggars cannot be choosers and it’s still way better than the BA beer offering! A few little snack bits to keep the beer company on the way down.



And now, with an hour to go before I need to wander to the gate, it is time to make a dent in the Madri supply.

Eventually it dawned on me that the ratty riveted menus had been replaced and the new card menus are, at the moment at least , much smarter. They’re obviously not personalised to the Luxe lounge as all the upsell spirits are free pour in Luxe, but if time permits on a future visit I might order some food just for the heck of it




As 8pm rolled around the lounge has emptied and there are only five of us left. Two couples with irish accents and myself. Given there are flights to Belfast and Dublin still left to depart I’m guessing they will all be heading west rather than south.

Personally, I’ve been busy

Gate 23 tonight which is a walk on gate at the far reaches of the airport



I only had moments to wait before the outer doors were opened and we were allowed out into the wild to board our plane.



G-EUOA is ferrying all 13 of us to London this evening. Yes, thirteen passengers total and I have the business cabin to myself.

Already the crew are great fun and it’ll clearly be a short but happy flight.

Currently trundling over to the runway for an on time departure. Next stop: London Heathrow

Enjoy your trip.

I am just packing for my overnight in Narvik (interestingly, current temperature way up there over the Arctic Circle is higher than over here in The Hague) and just checked the train for tomorrow only to be met with the super annoying "alternative travel" notice. Now I have until tomorrow morning to figure out if I'll take the rail replacement bus, regular intercity bus to Leiden and then the train, metro to Rotterdam and then the ICD, or drive and park... somewhere. Ugh.

A great fun flight this evening, crew were engaging and amusing. It doesn’t hurt that I was the only one in CE!



I had ordered the gluten free special meal for this evening which converted into a very tasty chicken roll



Accompanied by a late night trio



Chattering away to the crew and the time flew by and we were ten minutes to landing.

We were on the ground nice and early and in true ‘Heathrow giveth and Heathrow taketh away’ fashion we parked up on a remote stand and no buses!

Maybe five minute later the bus appeared and with only 13 on board it took no time at all before we were off on the grand tour and over to domestic arrivals.

Now it’s time to find the bus stop and head over to tonight’s hotel.

Ugh! Good luck with your replanning, let us all know how you get on!

I’d chosen the Leonardo hotel again this evening as I enjoyed my previous stay. The 423 bus stops just down the road from the hotel so I made my way over to bus stop 6. It was only a couple of minutes before the 423 appeared and parked up at stop 4 1/2



A handful of hopeful souls headed to the bus only to be imperiously waved back to stop six. Eventually the driver had finished with his break and pulled forward to stop six, and we were all on board for the ten minute trip to the hotel.

There are lots of pictures of the hotel in my previous trip report back at the end of August so I will not repeat them all here but the Leonardo exceeded my expectations last time and again today. A bit of chatter and banter with the check in agent and I was upgraded to a business room I’ve no status with Leonardo, this booking was via booking.com








Just time for a nightcap and then off to bed, I need to be up nice and early tomorrow for my Concorde Room breakfast

For me, at least, 'slothlike' is often an aspirational state when on vacation!

Welcome to your private suite Mr UK!

(Also struggling with my travel as the train to the airport has been cancelled. Not a biggie as I now have a choice of leaving 20 minutes earlier to get to the airport at the same time as planned, or 20 minutes later and cutting things close. Obviously I am going for the early version.

Good morning from the Concorde Room here at Heathrow Terminal 5.

I awoke at half four and second order of business was to check google maps for my best option to the airport and the Hotel Hoppa was the choice of the day. It arrived nicely on time a few minutes before five o’clock and then we embarked on the grand bath road hotel tour before finally arriving at T5 about 25 minutes later.

The advantage of the Hoppa is that it drops you at the far south end of the terminal which means that it is a matter of moments to reach the lift and on to the First Wing.

Security was quiet and despite the standard iPad swab I was quickly through and heading to the First Class lounge. I was surprised to be greeted by this tacky Marriott advert at the entrance to the lounge



All was explained as I walked through the lounge, there is this little pop space tucked away against the window



Not exactly inspiring me to switch my loyalty to Marriott!

Continuing on through the lounge and out the other side, I made my way to the CCR and the first order of business is to stabilise my critically low caffeine levels!



No sign of any Marriott branding in here, but on the bar there is a little display for Showerings craft cider.



With an hour and a half before I need to think about heading to the gate, it is time to enjoy the coffee before wandering out onto the gallery for breakfast

Pretty poor showing all around for breakfast in the CCR this morning. Ordered my standard assortment of drinks along with the maple chop, over easy eggs, rosti, and some toast. One of the drinks was forgotten, the toast was forgotten, and the breakfast…. Well, the eggs are easy, but not over, and the chop… I needed to resole my shoes!




At least the rosti were, ummm, hash browns

I shall console myself by staring at the pretty Christmas tree downstairs



With half an hour before I need to head to the gate, I think I’ll finish up my drinks and then go have a little mooch around duty free and see what the promotions are this month.

Thanks. Having looked at my options, it worked out that all of them would either be slow (either bus, long way round with the train, park the car at the free parking halfway to the airport), expensive (park at the airport, taxi) or both (park in Hoofddorp P+R).

I decided I trust the regular local bus more than the rail replacement bus in the morning, so that's what I'm on. It's going to take about 3x longer to get to the airport but at least I'm not on the early departure like last time.
It's nice in a way to travel along here on the road, seeing the towns wake up. The train normally isolates one much more.

The disadvantage, other than the time, is that looking at my phone when bus is turning around it's route, is making me dizzy, so I need to take breaks. I did at least manage to do what I planned to do and figure out my bus from the airport into Narvik.

Also sorry for taking over your TR.

Lucky you! I wish the trip only took me 20 extra minutes.

And, just like that, I got on the wrong train at Leiden.

I must have misread the departure board, or the train was mislabeled, but we just got welcomed on board and this train is definitely not going to the airport.

Which explains why the app didn't suggest it. I just thought we maybe got in a little earlier and I made a connection it didn't think I would make. Which actually I could, there was a semi-fast train that left from the opposite track from the one I left from, which would have me in 10 minutes earlier than planned. Instead, I would get in 15 minutes later than planned, unless I miss a connection. Good thing I took an earlier bus than I originally considered, if this happened 30 minutes later, I would be getting into "you might have a problem" territory.

Hopefully this is the last excitement of this trip, otherwise I might have to ask eightblack to split my posts off and start my own live TR.
(speaking of, the train has now allowed to a crawl, and we are very clearly not yet at the station we were meant to be on at this time.)

​​​​