You may have heard rumors of travel nightmares in Europe because of the roll out of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES). It’s a biometric system designed to replace stamping passports, so it is a form of progress, if done right. Sadly, this is the EU, so it’s not been done right. Right would be capturing your fingerprints and face scan either online or once at an entry point, then speeding you through automated gates every time hence. Instead, the EU is sending all non-Schengen passengers through the same entry point, which is causing long delays, so long, that passengers are missing their flights, whether they had previously enrolled or not.
Forewarned, we arrived at Madrid Barajas airport four hours early for our early evening flight to London Heathrow. First problem, British Airways wouldn’t allow us to check our bag until less than three hours before the flight. Unable to check our bag, we couldn’t head through security, let alone customs and immigration. At the designated time we dropped off the bag and quickly passed through the security lines into the secure area. Thinking we were in the clear, since we were at departure gates, we started looking for a lounge to while away the time, when it occurred to me (perhaps those years working the US DHS), “we went through security, but not customs and immigration!” How?
Barajas international airport segregates non-Schengen passengers at a remote terminal, and by remote, I mean a five-minute, high-speed rail-line remote! We arrived at that terminal to find the promised chaos: a massive number of automated checkpoints, only a few people explaining in Spanish, and a mad mix of foreigners trying and being turned away. Luckily, we had enrolled in the EES when we disembarked our transatlantic cruise, so we made our way to an empty kiosk, read in our passports and got our faces confirmed, and moved on. But very many other people were left cycling through different kiosks, unsure of what was happening.
We found an excellent lounge to kill the extra time, and just as things started looking up, British Airways snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. First a forty-five minute take-off delay, then another forty-five minutes after we boarded, because they couldn’t properly load a pallet of non-luggage cargo. Now our early evening arrival was a mid-evening arrival. Okay, at least the sub-two hour flight to Heathrow was uneventful, until the pilot aborted the landing at one hundred meters altitude. For those unfamiliar, that’s about the height of the upper deck at your local stadium. Seems he came in too fast, and this being Heathrow, we were now at the back of the landing queue, costing another thirty minutes. And even then, with a different runway, we made a very fast and hard landing. Safe still beats late, though. We taxied to an empty area and our entire Boeing 777 disembarked to . . . busses. A large, international arrival at a major European hub, on the national airline, and . . . busses? Hmmmm.
The UK created its own new pre-arrival entry system last year, and we enrolled, so we whisked through immigration, but once again many Americans (and others) were caught up in “do you have an ETA?” discussions. Of course our bag was nearly last off the plane, so we dashed to the Heathrow Express and arrived at Paddington station fifteen minutes later, around eleven pm.
We have been visiting London and staying near Paddington for decades. There are several small neighborhoods there where rows of former townhouses have been repurposed into boutique hotels, at about half the going rate for American-style hotels in London. You’ll get a quirky room (our bathroom is up several stairs), no air conditioning, and a full English breakie. And walkable to Paddington, which connects everywhere in London.
You may have rushed past that “no air conditioning” comment. It’s not common in London, and since our time in sunny Spain was a little cooler than anticipated, we were more worried about layers when we emerged from the Tube. Alas, a heat dome settled over the area just in time for our arrival, including the warmest May temperature on record (35 Celsius, 95 Fahrenheit). And London has long records. We had to recall all our travel survival tips, remembering the joy of frequent cold showers, pub stops, and visiting a (outrageously expensive at twenty English pounds-per-person) little cinema for air conditioning (Hint: The Sheep Detectives is great fun!). We made it through the first day of the heat wave that way, but the inability to get any airflow or cooling at night sent me back to find another hotel in the same area, this time with a/c.
And we were lucky, since we have already seen and done all the tourist must-sees/dos. We narrowed our agenda down to evening hours, or added in all those breaks and stops. For example, we took in an evening performance of a new Sherlock! production at the Regents Park open air theater, which would have been dreadful for the matinee.
We planned a picnic in Kensington Gardens, but instead of building it ourselves, we simply strolled into a Marks & Spencer and picked up all the necessaries in a few well-organized minutes. Pro-tip: we always travel with small, packable rain coats, which make an expedient picnic blanket. Add in a great public park with much shade, and Bob’s your uncle!
Sunday we trekked to Marylebone to visit Saint James Catholic church at Spanish Place, a Gothic structure with a lot of history. The church survived because it was bequeathed to the Spanish government and gained immunity from the back-and-forth persecutions of the English Reformation. We just enjoyed hearing a Mass in English for a change.
A short walk away we reserved our first Sunday Roast at a pub called The Prince Regent. It’s an English tradition to serve roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast vegetables, and a sticky toffee pudding for Sunday brunch. Somehow we had heretofore missed out on it, and it was delicious.
We arranged mid-morning tickets to the special exhibition of works by Francisco de Zurbarán at the National Gallery. Having seen some of the Spanish master’s work at the Prado, it was great to find a more complete collection spanning all his work in London.
This final painting is quite unique: it features a pensive Virgin Mary looking on at Jesus as a young man who has cut his finger on a crown of thorns he wove. Jesus seems more curious than pained, but Mary clearly suffers a premonition.
Right next door, we had lunch in the crypt cafe under St. Martins-in-the-fields, a favorite of ours whenever we’re in London. There’s something a touch unsettling at the floor tombstones, but a memento mori is always a good thing.
Most of this trip was replaying favorites from past visits: the picnic, a walk along the “little Venice” canals behind Paddington station, riding the Tube, going to the open air theater, pub visits, the National Gallery, St. Martin’s. We got a roast (first time), fish and chips, and very good Lebanese food. We suffered for my (not air-conditioned) sins. We’ve not grown tired of London yet, as Samuel Johnson observed, for there’s still more to see and do.
