Nightmare at Heathrow

My first trip going to Europe started out as a traveler’s nightmare. A roommate and I had made plans a whole year in advance that we were going to do a scavenger hunt for both the most beautiful and the strangest Christmas customs we could find in Western Europe. We had the whole month of December planned, starting with a trip to northern Spain and Barcelona to find the funniest caganer that we could, a hunt for a traditional Christmas tree in southern France, and ending in St. Peter’s Square on Christmas before heading back home to Virginia via London.

Our nightmare happened on our way IN to Europe. We were stranded in London’s Heathrow airport before we even got to continental Europe, thanks to a freak early December ice storm. At first we laughed about it and took everything in stride (we were in no holiday hurry fortunately). So we dropped off our bags in a locker, and started walking around for exercise. I had never been to Heathrow before, and not only was the airport humongous, it was also the most crowded I have ever seen.

A few hours later we were told that our flight would not only be delayed a few hours, but that it would be delayed for several days. Ok, so there was like, no way! We had already spent five hours in those awful airport lobby chairs, and the prospect of camping on the floor was NOT appealing. Fortunately there was Wi-Fi inside the airport, so we started looking for Heathrow hotels to stay the night. How very like my luck though, we were having a bug of a time finding something that was close enough to the airport to get free transportation and that was affordable on our student budgets. Some of the Heathrow airport hotels only had suites available, but after an hour of digging we managed to find a hotel that was actually both inside the terminal and affordable (the Hilton). That choice turned out to be a no-brainer. The hotel was a perfect place to plop for two days, and the free movie rentals was a great way to blow time.