Europe Vacation – I – Bon Voyage

With work opportunities in Europe not looming anywhere on the horizon:), I guess we decided it would not do us much harm (except financially), to make a short getaway to Europe. Aiding the decision, was the fact that, with Shamala’s bro and parents already there, it would make for good family vacation, and more importantly, a less costly one (more heads to split the cost against!).  Add to that the fact that we did little or no work in planning the trip, apart from getting our visa, tickets to and from London, and investing in Lets Go Europe guide book.  Rest all on BIL, the great!

The visa process turned out to be relatively easy. UK visa turned up 4 days after we submitted our application, and the Schengen visa took a week. Bottomline – provide as much information and documents as possible, and the process is generally a cake walk. We also got tickets to our liking; Jet Airways at around 54k return for the two of us

So our departure from India was planned on July 30th night. What is a trip without some adventure right at the beginning:). 15 mins into our ride to the airport, the rain came pouring down and with it came the traffic jams. For a 9:30 departure flt, we left home at 6 pm. We reached at 8:15 pm, taking 30 mins more than expected to reach;  in the end it was quite safe, but there were some tense moments along the way. Maybe a little bit of judgement error on my part also, in hindsight. Shouldnt have trusted bangalore traffic so much.

So we flew out of Bangalore and landed in Mumbai. Our flt to london was at 1:45 am. Immigration was a breeze. Few things I noticed. The departure forms (and the arrival ones) look much more professional. 6 years back they looked pretty pathetic. Secondly, I was really taken aback by the amount of people traffic at the international airport. Talk about recession! I was not seeing any of that at the international airport.

Anyways, by the time we finished immigration, we were ready to board. We enviously passed the first class (full reclining), business class (semi-reclining) to our economy class seat (very little reclining!).  Though I think the seats were quite comfortable and good leg room- Jet Airways is pretty decent. We took off on time. It was to be a 9 hour flt, reaching Heathrow at 6:45 am London time. We dozed on and off. I used the time to catch up on some movies – Wolverine is one of them I remember (mebbe the scotch got to me a little:) ). After a fairly comfortable flight, we finally landed in London! Ta – da!