Before I start waffling on about my travels this time to Croatia and Slovenia, I thought it thrilling to mention that Lisbon decided to give one COVID, such a nice present to bring back from Portugal isn’t that? Perhaps it means that I won’t bring it home this time, who knows…
Anyway, let’s talk about the epicentre of the UK, London Heathrow which is currently in my bad books. As the flight was scheduled to depart at 08:55, it was decided that we would leave old Bristol at 4am to give ample time for everything…apparently not! After a trip around the car park for 20 minutes at 6am, we entered the fantastic T3. Now, check in at Heathrow is usually fast and seamless, oh no, not this time. To be fair to the guy, he just had it out with the person in front of us being very picky about his seating arrangements. As usual, we dropped off the manual wheelchair at oversized baggage, headed through security and headed to the gate with 20 minutes to spare…time flies when you are at LHR and it is at this point that the fun starts. One always thinks that every plane out of Heathrow has a jetway attachment so I can leave Superbunny at the door, no, our plane was out at stand meaning that we were rushed into the van, Bristol style! On the journey across the airfield, we learnt all about the staff shortages from one of the managers who got roped in to assist us. Shortly after taking our BA seats, we were informed of a 30 minute delay due to baggage belt issues, this was then followed by a very apologetic announcement by the captain that some checked in luggage was to be left behind at T3, luckily we only brought hand luggage. It then dawned on me that we had checked in the manual wheelchair, meh, surely it would be a priority right? Our 30 minutes were up and ATC literally kicked us out of T3 meaning that we were tugged to, what the captain called a ‘scenic’ point of the airfield meaning that we could watch the runway whilst we waited for our slot…how nice of LHR!
After just a 115 minute flight, we touched down at Zagreb, I’m sure that captains are becoming more friendly as the guy came out to us and reassured that he had signed to confirm that Superbunny was onboard (learn something new everyday!). As protocol, we were rushed through the back to the baggage collection which, with only 2 or 3 planes visible was eerily quiet. The only thing we were waiting for was the manual wheelchair, we stared at the oversized baggage shoot for 30 minutes, nothing came, waited in ‘Lost and Found’ for 60 minutes only to be told that the UK is a mess and they can’t do much hence I have now tasked a PA back home with the nice job of finding out where exactly it has gone!
Now, it took me about two weeks to find an accessible taxi to take us from the airport to the hotel, turned out to be an accessible minibus courtesy of TravelAble (poor driver was waiting for over 2 hours). The end i.e. the hotel was in sight!!
We are staying in the Hilton Canopy which is a 5 minute walk from the train station in preparation for the trip to Ljubljana on Tuesday…also directly above the tram track…always love a clickity clack whilst trying to sleep? Anyway, the room is just as you would expect from a Hilton accessible room…
As our taxi driver mentioned, all the sights in Zagreb are within walking distance so the plan for tomorrow is simply meander around the city side of the river…