Above: Tower Bridge as we descend over London.
Paris to London
Today, we are bound for Sevilla in Spain, via London. After breakfast we took the metro to Opera and hopped on the Roissybus to Charles de Gaulle airport Terminal 1. It was much easier than the train!
It may seem strange that we are travelling from Paris to London and then to Sevilla. This turned out to be the most economical way for us. Round-trip tickets on British Airways (London to Paris return) and Iberia (London to Sevilla/Madrid return), joined back-to-back, were very competitive. One-way fares are still artificially high in the region.
With my insistence, we managed to get our bags and boarding pass from Paris to London and then on to Sevilla. This was despite being on different airlines and different bookings, because both airlines are part of the same alliance.
Airside we went through the long tunnel to the satellite buildings to board our short flight to London Heathrow departing at 1340.
Tunnel from Terminal 1 to the satellite buildings where boarding gates are located.
Today’s approach gave us a great view of London city before we landed at 1400. It was horribly bumpy as we came in to land and we later saw large gets being buffeted around as well.
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- Tower Bridge.
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- Hyde Park and River Thames.
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- Hyde Park.
London to Sevilla
We had 2h40 to make our connection to Sevilla, departing at 1440. Connecting at Heathrow isn’t as easy as at we had to take an airside transfer bus from Terminal 4 to the Flight Connection Centre where we cleared security before walking to our gate at Terminal 2.
Queues at security were long. I noticed a number of Orthodox Jews carrying palms stalks. [Edit: I later looked up the significance of these, and they are for an upcoming festival called Sukkot.]
We finally got out of the disgustingly smoky terminal onto an Iberia MD88 for the 2h35 flight to Sevilla. The five crew provided a very comprehensive beverage service along with a sandwich.
It was warm and humid when we landed at Sevilla at 2015. We took the bus to the city and changed to a taxi to reach our hostal. The short ride was only EUR2.60 whereas in Paris the similar ride (paid for by the hotel) was EUR15.
Hostal Atenas had a beautiful entranceway and courtyard. But the rooms were plain but functional. Quite importantly, the shower was strong. We were tired, retiring around 2200, even though it wasn’t a strenuous day.