Travel Day

On July 10th (yes, I am very far behind in reporting our travels) we flew from London Heathrow to Zurich, Switzerland, for the next leg of our trip.  Traveling is very stressful these days, but, worrywart that I am, I had additional reasons to be stressed.  

I had purchased tickets for the National Express bus from Bournemouth to Heathrow.  Since it was an international flight, I thought that it would leave from Terminal 5, the terminal at which we had arrived in England the week before.  However, there are international flights that leave from other terminals.  Terminal 5 is for British Airways, and we were flying on Swiss International.  Our flight was to leave from Terminal 2.  Terminal 5 was the first stop on the bus route; Terminal 2 was the next stop.  Would we be allowed to stay on the bus an extra stop?  Or would we have to find another way to get from one terminal to the other.  It might be a problem if we were running late.  My cousin Kevin and blogger Gary assured me that there would be no problem.

Our bus was to leave from Bournemouth just before 8:00 AM.  Kevin drove us to the station, and we said our farewells.  The bus arrived on time.  I asked the driver if it would be a problem if we stayed on for an extra stop.  He said that actually it was not permitted, but that he would turn a blind eye to the rules.  He put our luggage in the section of the compartment for Terminal 2.  So, the first reason for stress was a non-issue.

I also worried that our bus would arrive late at Heathrow.  The journey by bus was supposed to take two hours.  That would would give us almost four hours before our plane for Zurich was scheduled to leave.  However, I had read reviews of the bus company that told horror stories of hours' long delays due to snarled traffic.  As it turned out, the journey went smoothly, and we arrived at Terminal 2 at around 10:00 AM.  We checked our luggage and passed through security with plenty of time to spare.  We had even more time because our flight was delayed by over an hour.  We had a meal at one of the restaurants, and waited for our gate to be assigned.

Heathrow Terminal 2

At last we boarded our flight, took off and were flying over London.

The flight is a short one... about an hour and a half.

We were soon making our descent over the Swiss countryside.

We sat on the north side of the plane so we did see the Alps through out window.

We landed at Zurich Airport, but our journey was not over yet.

We had to buy tickets to go from the airport to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof (the main train station).  From there we bought train tickets to take us to the nearby city of Uster where my cousin Brigitta lives.  She and her husband Peter were there at the station to take us to their home.  The sun soon set on our long travel day.