25 August
This was a big travel day, with some time-critical connections. Our destination: Udine in Northern Italy, in time for Lynne’s nephew’s wedding in Friuli the following day.
As scheduled, the Queen Mary 2 gently berthed in Southampton Harbour fifteen minutes before seven in the morning. Disembarkation was thankfully straightforward. We were in a queue, on deck three, at seven am with our luggage ready, to alight as soon as the gangway was clear.
A UK border official was on the ship’s passage, which meant we had already passed border control earlier in the week, and could just leave the ship with no further controls. This speeded up our departure considerably.
It was a long walk through the terminal, past all the porters offloading a huge volume of baggage belonging to passengers, who would have to await for their allotted disembarkation time, which could be as late as the afternoon.
There were plenty of taxis, and we arrived at Southampton railway station before 7.45am, with a couple of hours’ wait for our booked train departure. Rather early than late! Although we would have been able to go directly to Gatwick, our fast-track disembarkation allowed us the luxury to go home to our flat in London to adjust and reduce the weight of our rucksacks.
The London bound train was busy but on time. So we travelled to Waterloo station and then the underground to Belsize Park and the walk uphill to our flat.
We had ninety minutes there, time to offload some heavy gear and dirty washing, pick up some further items, enjoy a cup of tea (with milk sachets from our cabin), collect some mail and remove a rather large weed from one of the pots out front. From then, the underground to London Bridge and train to Gatwick were easier.
Stormy weather over the Alps, disrupted flights, and not just ours. We were due to travel onward from Venice, with Chris and Kirsten, their partners and Kay. We were all dispersed on three separate flights arriving in Venice airport about the same time, and we were all delayed.
Our EasyJet flight’s delay was compounded by excess rubbish bags on the jetty from the previous flight, which had to be removed, and late arrival of the flight catering.
Chris, was waiting for us in arrivals, having flown in from Cologne. Kay, Becca, Kirsten and Dylan were the last to arrive from Heathrow. Actually not quite last – that award goes to our taxi driver! But at least he did finally arrive, ready to take us all on the 1 1/2 hour drive to Udine.
We didn’t leave the airport until midnight but still encountered a traffic jam on the motorway! We dropped Kay off at 1.30am and then got stopped by the police and had to show our ID’s. We assumed they had heard that there was a party of partying Brits in town, but we were the late arrivals and hadn’t yet started partying…
We got to our hotel at 1.45am, but we were at least where we needed to be. We had managed over 11,000 steps, mostly carrying our rucksacks. Lynne was concerned that her tired legs would not recover in time for the dancing, now later, the very same day!
