After a fairly pleasant direct flight from Halifax to London, I emerged from the plane into a far corner of London's Heathrow airport.
I have always had messy experiences at Heathrow. Part of the problem is that no matter how big it gets it's always under-built for the massive volumes of traffic passing through it. This gives Heathrow a distinctive mix of vast shiny new pavilions and chaotic mazes of bypasses and construction.
Arriving at the giant new Terminal 2 (The Queen's Terminal, no less) was a perfect example. First there is a warren of gangways and hallways and stairs, and eventually, though you're still in weird angular corridors, you get the familiar "Welcome!" pictures ... right next to a very basic pet relief station.
Shortly after that you see your first big windows with your first view outside, and it's perfect Heathrow: ad-hoc barriers, stacked prefabs, and cramped infrastructure. The lens glare from my dirty phone camera just made it feel even more appropriate.
Soon you get to the ultra-futuristic arrivals hall, complete with echoing empty chambers and nightclub lighting.
I had filled out a form in a phone app a few days before my trip, which meant that all I had to do was scan my passport at an automated kiosk and wait for the green light and I was welcome into the UK without having to bother a single human agent. This is the future the younger me imagined I would be living in by 2025.
Then I tried to get to my hotel. Since my flight arrived at 9pm, I decided it would be easier to stay up at the airport rather than try to get downtown. Poking around online a few months earlier I had found a decent deal at a Crowne Plaza that was right in the airport complex. I like staying at hotels attached to airports when I have an early or late flight, since it saves me the headache of getting to or from the terminals. I had made one serious mistake, though: I neglected to confirm which terminal it was part of. The two big airports I've spent the most time in for most of my life have been San Francisco and Toronto Pearson, both of which have their terminals in a roughly circular arrangement, all connected by a small automated train that gets you between them in mere minutes.
Heathrow, of course, is not like that. Terminals 2 and 3 are in one big cluster in the central north part of the airfield, Terminal 5 is just to the west of them, and Terminal 4 is at the far southern end of the airfield, over a kilometre away and on the other side of one of the busiest runways in the world.
It turned out my hotel was at Terminal 4.
But that's okay! There's a free train that gets you there. In fact it's part of the new Elizabeth Line, but you can just hit a button on a machine and get a free one-stop ticket to get you there. I cheerfully made my way down multiple giant escalators past inscrutable art installations and through a warren of underground tunnels until I finally got to the train station. The permanent wayfinding signs were crossed off and an agent was telling everybody that the trains were now on opposite tracks than expected. But that's okay! I found my train just as it was about to leave. The train ran underground for a few minutes and got me out at ... Terminal 5. I only realized I had the wrong terminal after I went up a big slow elevator which felt like something from a video game, entered a huge empty departures hall, couldn't find any signs to my hotel, and double-checked my reservation. But that's okay! Now I know how all of this works. I went back down the big video-game elevators, this time with a whole German high-school sports team, the coach asking me if this was to the city trains, to which I shrugged. I caught the next inter-terminal train, but it ended up taking me back to Terminal 2. But that's okay! I've been here before and I know where the platform is for the Terminal 4 train. I made my way there - and discovered a big crowd of sad tired looking people and an agent speaking quickly into a walkie-talkie. Turns out there was track trouble and/or construction and they didn't know when the next train to Terminal 4 would be coming. But that's okay! He said ten minutes maybe. So I waited ten minutes and then he said ten more minutes maybe and I realized I was experiencing another classic British thing: something that's built to be efficient but is somehow broken, so everybody waits while a cheerful-sounding official waffles about it. This is the inspiration for many Monty Python and Douglas Adams and Terry Gilliam bits. While I appreciated the cultural immersion, it had been a long day and it was late and I was tired, and I wasn't sure whether that train was going to arrive at all. But that's okay! There are other options! The inter-terminal bus had a slow schedule, so I decided to take a cab. I walked back through hundreds of meters of underground tunnels and up more video-game-scale elevators to the ground level, where I found a cab stand and got into what was clearly a 21st century take on a classic London Black Cab.
This was when I got my next experience of a classic British thing: everything is expensive. Cabs aren't cheap even in dense downtown London, and while the hotel might have been only about a kilometre away as the crow flies, we had to drive all the way around the outer circuit of Heathrow, a distance of about 7 kiliometers. Not waiting for the free train ended up costing me £32 - over $60! But I had finally made it to the hotel. It was finally actually okay.
The Crowne Plaza had nice rooms and a pleasant downstairs bar and an excellent breakfast buffet, but it shared a strange building with a Holiday Inn, both looking over an open indoor courtyard area that had maybe been meant for something else back when it was first built, but was now just awkwardly empty. I'd never had a room with a view of the Backrooms before.
After a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast it was time to head into London. The trains were running properly today, but the station was inside the main terminal. It turns out the hotel wasn't directly attached to the terminal, but instead I had to walk through the most Heathrow thing I had seen yet: an ad-hoc-looking enclosed walkway that looked like something from a 1980s Doctor Who episode about giant alien gerbils.
I actually kind of loved it. There was something indescribably British about it.
I finally got on the train. Instead of the Heathrow Express I was able to just step onto the Elizabeth Line and ride into town. I bought and loaded up an Oyster card and then discovered that now in 2025 I could have just used Apple Pay directly by tapping my phone or watch. Oh well. Not a big problem. Everything went smoothly this morning.
I got off at Tottenham Court Road station, wandered some more underground tunnels and giant escalators, found an exit, and yes I was definitely in London.
