As planned we took our suitcases to Paddington Station and dropped them at the Left Luggage place. We then decided to go to the Imperial War Museum here in London - so we have now been to all but one of their museums.
It turns out that going to the IWM was a good decision. First, they have lockers where we could leave our backpacks so we had a comfortable time walking around without carrying all our travel stuff. And, also, the museum has just recently opened a new WW1 gallery which is wildly popular and for good reason - we spent almost 1.5 hours just in that part of the museum. Later today I got an eMail from Ticketek saying that 350 of the IWM's most important WW1 items are coming to Melbourne in April next year and offering me a place on the waitlist for tickets - I don't think I'll need to do this as I suspect I've seen most of them!
Continuing the theme - Paul with some really big guns - 15 inch naval guns outside the IWM London.
Inside the IWM
WW1 poster encouraging Australians to join up
View of the London Eye taken from the outdoor cafe seating at the IWM
Nose cone of the Lancaster bomber "Old Fred"
Anyway, by the time we had some lunch and then looked at the rest of the museum it was 3:30 and time to start heading for the airport.
I had a minor issue with the Heathrow Express tickets. I ordered them online a couple of days ago, and took up the option of getting them via SMS. The text arrived as soon as I booked the tickets but I didn't try out the link to the tickets until today. So of course, it didn't seem to work, and from the small amount I could see it looked like the tickets were booked for travel two days ago, and not today. However it finally worked out and they were for the right day.
I was a bit concerned that the train might be busy but there were only a few people in our carriage. Maybe the price puts people off because you can actually get a limo to the airport for less than the price for two train tickets, but the flexibility of these trains was the useful thing for me - there's a train every 15 minutes and you don't have to pre-book for a specific train, just for a specific day.
We got to the airport fairly early but Qantas as was happy to check us in. The lady who checked us in was really friendly and helpful, I suppose not in the least because the hordes hadn't started arriving yet - and because her previous customer was a dick trying to convince her that he should be exempt from some rule because he's travelling in first class and so we were also a pleasant change for her!
We managed to have problems at security as usual. Paul's shoes set off the security scanner so he had to have a full body scan. Then, when they out his shoes through the machine separately, somehow his passport and boarding pass ended up going through too, and he didn't pick them up. And, while picking up my stuff, I tried to move one of the trays that you put all your stuff in - which they ask you to do - trouble is, it was much heavier than I thought it would be and I managed to wrench my still sore wrist and elbow. Ouch.
However, since then, no real dramas. I'm writing this in the Admirals Club Lounge which is the American Airlines lounge here at Heathrow and is available to Qantas Club members too.
Unfortunately we have just missed Melanie - she arrived at Heathrow from the USA late this afternoon, but at a different terminal, and it was just too late for us to try to track each other down.
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