Our pick up was due at the hotel at 0825, and lo and behold there he was. It was rush hour so we took a back route to the airport that was interesting, we saw a part of Malta that we hadn’t seen. It appears that the Maltese authorities have changed regulations private taxis are not allowed to drop off at the official location. Admittedly only a two minute walk to the airport main entrance, not really impressed with that but was it the taxi drivers fault?
Transit through the airport was actually ok, the queue wasn’t too bad and our hold luggage was pretty much spot on, fractions of a kilo out. We had arrived a little early so we had about 40 to 50 minutes to wait before the gate to board opened.
The open gate doesn’t mean we just get on board, a round of document checks and priority boarding first. We boarded the plane pretty much on target for our 1135 departure time. Except we didn’t move. The captain informed us that Gatwick had asked us to hold for an hour because of bad weather in the UK.
We actually sat there for about thirty minutes before the captain gave us the go we had a short taxi and then we were off. The flight was routine, except we went into. A bit of a holding pattern before our final approach for probably about twenty minutes ending in a nicely smooth landing.
Processing through the airport went quite smoothly, no customs, we got the monorail to South terminal. You’d think wouldn’t you that they would have a nice big lift to transfer people from the airport level to the train station, not one that would take only three people and their bags. We took the escalator.
Now, there is the possibility that someone pressed the emergency stop or, it might have been an overly sensitive relay that, when Elayne’s bag connected with the bottom of the trackway caused the escalator to stop. Either way, we kept quiet and slunk away from the rather full mechanism.
We had to wait maybe ten minutes for the train. The journey was smooth no problems, even the change at Havant didn’t need a change of platform and a wait of just a few minutes for the train to Portsmouth Harbour.
To be continued. Perhaps I should give one spoiler; nothing bad happens in part two.
Bills Posts 