This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Epilogue
16:18 - abandon flaky wi-fi and secure seat in air conditioned lobby at guest computer
16:19 - logged onto pc
16:21 - logged onto VS website
16:23 - logged into manage my booking, no chance to view seatmap, OLCI not yet available
16:24 - start hitting refresh
16:25 - bingo!
16:26 - checked in, boarding passes emailed
16:27 - boarding passes printed
16:28 - WHAT! SEQ 70 and 71 ?? I demand a recount. Curse those check out and chill inners.
11 days of doing sweet f.a. at the wonderful East Winds - bliss. That we’d done so little was made evident in the photos when we were showing them to the offspring - 170 pictures, around 140 of which were basically the same view from the same sun lounger at different times of day. Plus one or two of yours truly frolicking in the sea before Greenpeace intervened and tried to tow me out to deeper waters.
Each day followed the same pattern; count mozzy bites, shower, sun slap, breakfast, beach, read crime novel set in LA / Oxford / Glasgow / Edinburgh / Copenhagen, pre lunch beer, lunch with beer, post lunch cocktail, beach, digital hour, digital hour champagne, shower, mozzy repellent, pre dinner champagne, dinner with several wines taken, post dinner scrabble (MrsPJH ahead), post dinner cards (PJH ahead), post dinner rum (PJH outright winner).
Oh, I almost forgot. The breakfast fruit smoothie. Always made from yesterday’s fruit and / or veg, not your usual strawberry and banana (though banana did often feature). Possibly the most outré was the final morning’s cucumber and beetroot.
East Winds is our idea of an ideal destination. Around 30 "rooms" (actually small bungalows), with excellent food and drink, great staff, a swim up bar, a beach, some lightweight watersports if you want to take part and possibly the most stylish coffee machine I’ve ever seen. A large copper affair, with various pipes spitting steam, it looked like something out an HG Wells story about time travel.
Could’ve done with a few more days to work on my tanning regime - taken carefully this year to avoid my usual "Fortnight in Fukushima" outcome on skin colouring - but as we were packing up the weather was on the turn. During our last night and day the rain was far heavier than we’d experienced even during the excitement that was Tropical Storm Ernesto, with accompanying thunderstorms.
I had been toying with the idea of surprising MrsPJH with the helicopter, on the basis that even though she’d be terrified it would be maybe 15 minutes of terror rather than the 1 hour and 15 minutes of same that would come with the taxi ride. As the weather had closed in, I was glad I didn’t as they were threatening to cancel, in the end bringing all flights forward an hour thus giving their passengers no time for lunch at the hotel and an extra hour at UVF. Nice.
In the end the most terrifying thing about the taxi ride back to UVF was the fact he didn’t have any petrol and nor did the any of the petrol stations we passed. Eventually we found one down a side road, but by then we were running a wee bit later than I would have liked. I managed to take my mind off this by admiring the view of the low grey clouds on the high green hills, putting me in mind of the damper scenes in Jurassic Park. At least this time we didn’t encounter, as we did when we arrived, the local Fitzcarraldo attempting to move a large boat by road across the island.
Main Act
Though, for once, we had pre-printed boarding passes to hand and would have been happy just to use the bag drop, the queue was waaaay long so headed for the UC desk. Though there was only group at the desk, we were grabbed by the queue manager and directed to the PE desk before the next person in that queue got there. Oops. Slightly embarrassing. All I could manage was weak smile and a "what can you do?" shrug.
At this point I made a fundamental tactical error. MrsPJH wanted to wander round the terminal looking at the trinkets; I demurred, saying we should head for the lounge. The error here was that I couldn’t really then play the duty free rum card. B*gger. Never mind, like wine bought in France it never tastes the same at home anyway - or at least that’s what I tell myself.
In fairness the lounge was much as I anticipated. All the buffet style food had been scarfed already, but luckily the rum hadn’t. Not a space to spend much time, though it seems to have had some modernization fairly recently and at least it had a view of the aircraft. Being the worrying type, somewhere my mind always frets that no boarding call will be made or we’ll miss it, but with the aircraft in view as the scheduled boarding time came and went with no announcement we could at least see that it wasn’t because we’d been forgotten. After 45 minutes, though, I was regretting my impulsiveness on heading straight there.
Of course we hadn’t been forgotten, and the boarding call came. More than 14 souls left at this time so there were either some Au in there or people had taken up the VH offer of lounge access.
Down to a bit of a queue, a cheery "have a good flight" and out to the stroll to the aircraft.
I have to say I do like using the stairs. Not only does it allow the inner geek to appreciate the sheer size of a 747 (and think "how do they get something that big to fly?") they are a signifier of transition, that you’re doing something different. When using the jetway it the gate / jetway / seat journey sometimes feels a bit like room / corridor / room.
So, back to what we now refer to as "our seats" 6A and K. As the crew are still setting things up around the bar, a chance for a quick perusal of our fellow pointy enders. 4 other people from East Winds, who knew at least 2 others. 2 people with substantial hand luggage, with 1 of them spending a good deal of time emptying and repacking same. Not, as it turned out, the best of moves.
Soon the crew are all about their tasks; champagne, menus and sleep suits distributed, drinks orders and wake up call requests taken. Though friendly enough, they were all business. Over the flight as a whole there were at least 3 at work during the non sleeping hours, and sometimes there seemed to be 4. Interestingly - and it may just be mood and perception - the service didn’t seem as sparkly as with the contingent of 2 on the way out, but perhaps that just because they were trying to compress a series of tasks into a more constrained time frame.
An announcement from the flight deck predicted an early arrival into Gatwick, and included a rather odd little spiel about "x providing service in the rear cabin has recently set up a restaurant decorating business so if you can put some business here way please do". This continued at intervals through the flight. At one point I wondered whether this was code for something - such as when they request Inspector Sands to come to the control room at Kings Cross Station - but perhaps he on the flight deck was sweet on she in the cabin.
I have one of those "how did we get to this?" moments when both MrsPJH and myself respond "no, that’s ok, we know what to do" when asked whether we need an explanation of the workings of the suite
I take one of the reds on offer for my pre-dinner drink, thinking that consistency with what I have at dinner will be best. Not, as it turned out, the best of moves.
It was Odyssey’s turn to be the provider of televisual entertainment. Unfortunately none of the more promising material in the brochure - e.g. the recent film about Bob Marley - was actually available on this leg of the flight, and some of the wrong films had been loaded. Meh. So out with the Ian Rankin that I’d saved.
Dinner, taken a deux again, consisted of an olive and cheese amuse bouche, a good soup with croutons the size of small loaves and an unappetizing looking but good tasting piece of beef. Now, however lacking in visual grace the beef was, it paled into insignificance compared to the banana fritter dessert. Rather put me in mind of one of Mrs Miggins’ frenchified offerings in "Nob and Nobility".
Went polyester ninja at this point, and to the land of nod for a while. Well, until awoken by MrsPJH looming over saying "Will.. You.. Stop.. Snoring!". Ah. Oops. That’s the red wine for you. Settled again, only to regret the sleep suit decision, as not only was I a notch too warm, the slightly elevated temperature brought the bites back to life.
All too soon, we were being gently woken. Grabbed the chance to change out of the bite enhancer cocoon before others stirred, and by the time I returned from the changing room my bed was squared away. Opted for the bacon & brown sauce roll and coffee, which I couldn’t really taste as I was (admittedly self) afflicted with a claggy cotton wool mouth. They also passed by offering juice and a bagel, which may have been a better option.
After an uneventful and uninteresting descent - still dark, so not much to look at - we were on the ground and at stand about half an hour ahead of schedule. Coats and luggage that had been put in wardrobes were returned, and the passenger who had been rearranging their hand luggage at the start of the flight decided to have another crack at it. And another. And another. Until it became clear they were getting slightly frantic at which point a crew member enquired whether there was something wrong. It seems that their passport had vanished sometime in all the unpacking and repacking cycles, and learning this the crew member was straight onto taking the suite apart.
I don’t know whether the missing item was ever found, for at this point we were invited to start disembarking. Not quite full priority, as the upper deck PE passengers were also exiting the aircraft, but close enough to allow us to arrive, after a lengthy stroll, into an empty and well staffed immigration control point. We were through there in a couple of minutes and arrived at the baggage carousel just at the same time as our bags, so were out into the arrivals area to buy possibly the worst cup of coffee I have had in my entire half century of drinking the stuff and await our taxi.
Epilogue
So this is the end of our first full fat LGW experience, and an excellent experience it was too. It would have been nice to have been on a refurbished aircraft on one leg, just to experience the new entertainment system and a less tired UC Suite, but in the end I’m happy with a book and much of the UC experience is about service, which, if a tad "to the point" on the return, was never less than I’d expect. Now to work out how to afford to be able to do it all again.
We can get better, because we're not dead yet
