We flew back to the UK on the Friday, 10 days after our arrival in Singapore. As with the journey out, this was a direct flight from Changi Airport to Heathrow with Singapore Airlines. We arrived at the airport with almost four hours to spare. We handed over our big bags at check-in and headed off to Jewel, home of the world’s highest indoor waterfall. Readers, we were disappointed – the waterfall has a rest until 10 o’clock every morning. Not much else seemed to be open, so we just headed back to the terminal and went through security. (Note to other travellers: Jewel is landside; you can’t get to it once through security.)
Once we were in the Departures area of T3 we found something I had forgotten about – the butterfly garden. It’s a small, enclosed area where butterflies of many species are just flying about and feeding on the sweet food that’s available to them. The butterflies are very beautiful, and looking at them helped fill up the time before we could board the aircraft.
Which brings us to the flight. It was not a pleasant experience; we were sat on the aircraft for 15 hours or a bit longer. The flight itself took almost an hour longer than scheduled, 14 hours instead of 13-and-a-bit. Then there were the usual periods spent sat in the plane both before and after the actual flight, and these amounted to at least an hour extra. I was feeling very sore and uncomfortable by the time we got off.
Getting back into the UK was pretty quick. There was a long walk from the gate to UK Border but after 15 hours being sat down I was glad for the opportunity to stretch my legs. We both got through the automated immigration process quickly, didn’t have to spend too long waiting for our bags, and found a Hoppa bus waiting to depart once we were outside in the T2 approach area.
We were staying at the Renaissance hotel, which is on the Heathrow estate. We’d left the car there 11 days earlier and were finishing the holiday with a night’s stay before driving home the following day. We felt that it would not be wise to attempt the drive after the long journey especially by the time we were at the hotel (8:30pm) we’d been awake for about 23 hours. So it was straight to the room, have a cup of tea, and then to bed, and slept well.
We got away from Heathrow somewhere around 9am the following morning and were home by just after 2pm. By this time the hours spent awake the day before were catching up with us. We did a bit of shopping for food, we washed some clothes, and then we went to bed, happy to be home.
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