Globaliser

As I said in the other active thread on this, for the UK that's waaaaaaaay too much cash. Like VMax1700, I basically don't use cash any more. In 2024, I think I used cash once, at some charity event that didn't have a card machine. I often go out carrying nothing more than one credit card. You will find far more shops and restaurants that do not accept cash for payment than you will find places that don't take cards.

There are plenty of flights from Heathrow, which is likely to give you a bigger choice as well as arguably more convenient transfer options to/from Southampton. It's always worth looking at the total travel picture, not just at individual elements separately.

Northern Europe & Baltic Sea forum, I think.

I don't think anyone's suggesting relying on an Amex alone, and not bringing anything else. (It's pretty foolish to travel with only one card, anyway, because cards can fail for all sorts of reasons.) But if you have good reasons to use an Amex, and you have a backup for those occasions, what's the "uncertainty" downside to trying to use the Amex first? If the retailer says no, or the card machine says no, you're not going to be clapped in irons and hauled off to the police station. You just need to dig out the other card and pay.

Many people have very good reasons for using Amex as their primary card. If there's no reason to use a backup card, why talk them out of using the Amex?

To be honest, I can't see any boxes in these photos. I can see thin struts, but they won't be tripping hazards for anyone getting out of the seats. The thicker things look like they're well under the seat in front, although they don't immediately look like IFE boxes to me. Anyway, there looks to be plenty of foot room. Yes. Once again, you cannot tell anything useful about bookings from a seat map. And the flight's actually still more than three months away, isn't it?

For London (and probably for other tourist-heavy places), I think this risk can be overstated. For many years, I used an Amex as my primary card and there were very few places that did not take Amex. Last autumn, I had to put some transactions through on that card to reach a spend target, and had no difficulty getting there. However, if you do have reasons to use an Amex as a primary card, it is worth having a Mastercard or a Visa as a backup, because even in London there a few places that don't take Amex.

It's difficult to visualise what you're describing without seeing a photo, but I would be very surprised if the box (probably for the in-flight entertainment) is any form of tripping hazard for someone getting in and out of the seats. My first reaction is that it would never have got past certification if it was a tripping hazard, because that would be a potentially catastrophic difficulty in an emergency evacuation (not just for the person who tripped, but for anyone else who was brought down by the fallen body). So while the box might impinge on your foot room, and plenty of these do, they're unlikely to trip you or hinder your egress. FWIW, in a 2-2-2 configuration, the middle pair is exactly where experienced passengers would put themselves, and what airline staff would recommend to their friends. If you really don't want to be in those seats, then you might want to have a look at expertflyer.com for alerts that may tell you when a different pair of seats becomes available that's more to your liking. If you mean there are physical seats on the aircraft that are currently unallocated, that tells you nothing about the price that the airline is prepared to sell them for, including as cheapie upgrades. So don't place too much faith in seeing unallocated seats; it's a commonly-held fallacy.

You'll feel right at home here in the UK. At Gatwick, the railway station is actually in the airport. It's basically part of the South Terminal. If your flights are to/from the North Terminal, there's a landside airport transit train that shuttles back and forth between the terminals, and at the South Terminal end it's very close to the railway station. Although there isn't a direct train any longer between Gatwick and Southampton (note spelling), I think it can be done with one same-platform change; you get off the first train, and wait on the same platform for the next train. If that isn't going to put you off, then one of us can dig out the thread that's got all the details (or can post them again).

I would have thought that in 2025 the answer is to ignore ATMs and to not bring cash. Really, you don't need cash. I don't know how many times it needs saying. Especially given all the shops and restaurants in which cash is now useless, because it is not accepted for payment.

Card readers for these too!

Heathrow has four terminals, and something like 76 passenger airlines, and any flight may have up to four different classes. Every detail has the potential to change the detail of the process. But in general: queue at check-in, drop bag at desk, clear security, [shop, shop, shop], go to gate.

Where do you think you might start from? For example, if you're near the Beehive you could start at the end of the "Downhill Walk" marked as the orange line on the Botanic Garden's map (although obviously you'll then be mostly going uphill through the garden in that direction). Depending on where you want to go after that, you could just walk back down into town by a different route, rather than taking the cable car.

No. For the UK, it's waaaaaaaay too much cash.

They're free: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/free-toilets-at-britains-biggest-railway-stations/ For the UK, the basic answer is no. I think that in 2024, I used cash once, possibly at some charity event that didn't have a card facility. Otherwise, pretty much everything can be done by card. The number of places that don't take cards is far outstripped by the (now very significant) number of places that do not accept cash. In most tourist areas, there will be cafes and similar that have toilets. At worst, this will in effect cost you the price of a coffee or small snack. If you have enough chutzpah, most decent-size hotels have toilets somewhere in/near their lobbies.

Lucky people! That's interesting to know - thanks.

Oh, no. I love it. But back on topic, isn't it the case that the hotel is not open on match days?

For a visitor who's expecting only to have to get an ETA, the obvious visa would be a visitor visa. That's £115, which is more like CAD 213. In addition, "She said her processing fee was expensive".

She must have done. The official site would have charged her the equivalent of about CAD18.50; end of story.

What I'm constantly baffled by is this: We can all occasionally end up on websites that we didn't mean to. But why does anyone persist with a transaction when the price being asked for is so implausible? How come they don't stop, pause and think at that point, and ask themselves whether they are actually dealing with the genuine government website? Or at least check again what the official price is supposed to be? I'm glad that Truffles6868 at least has done this and potentially saved themselves some money. It's a bit scary to ponder the possibility that people do things that their computer tells them to, merely because the computer has told them to do it and they can't muster enough resistance to say no. FWIW, £10 is currently the equivalent of about CAD18.50.

If your hotel is near Victoria station, then your best bet is this: Take the Tube (Piccadilly Line) as far as Barons Court. Change there for the District Line. This is a cross-platform change, with a walk of no more than 10 feet. The District Line will take you to Victoria. To get back to Heathrow, you just do the same thing in reverse. If you only have backpacks and you take them with you when you leave the hotel, you can actually just get the Tube from whatever the closest station is at the time that you need to head back to the airport. It's the ultimate flexibility, really. The only thing I would suggest is that because 27 April is a Sunday, you make sure you know whether any relevant Tube lines are closed for engineering work that day, and plan around that if you need to. You don't need to buy a ticket or an Oyster card for the Tube, either in advance or even on the day. Simply use a contactless payment card (credit or debit card). Touch in as you enter the Tube system at Heathrow, and touch out as you exit at Victoria - at both of these stations, you will probably need to do this to open the gates, but it's important that you do so to make sure that you pay the correct amount rather than a penalty fare. Each passenger needs their own card, but I think that this is very rarely a problem for people.

If I've misunderstood all this, then apologies. But because of the first post suggesting a one-night stay, I read the second post as "We arrive on BA from Lisbon the day before, and depart the next day, again from terminal 5".

I think the OP's cruise ends in Lisbon on 26 April 2025. The closest fit for flight time for Lisbon to London is on 27 April 2025, arriving at T5 at 1955, with a departure from T5 to Toronto on 28 April 2025 at 1715. That would make the connection comfortably less than 24 hours, so BA ought to be able to through-check the bags and leave the OP free to do the overnight with carry-ons only (obviously assuming that it's on a through ticket).

Caution: the Heathrow Express isn't cheap if you pay a walk-up fare. And Paddington isn't really in central London, so the "15 minutes" on the train (actually 20 minutes to/from Terminal 5) is a bit misleading if you were to compare it to (say) a journey from Tottenham Court Road to Terminal 5 on the Elizabeth Line.

In your shoes, I would go into town and stay in town. If you can organise yourself to have everything you need overnight in carry-ons, through-check your luggage to Toronto. Then you can walk through immigration and customs without stopping to collect luggage, jump on the Tube or the Elizabeth Line to central London, and possibly even be there in time for a late dinner. The next day you will have many hours to sightsee, starting as early as you want, and you only need to be back at Terminal 5 by about 4 pm to clear security and head to your gate, so you'd need to leave central London by about 3 pm. You will probably already have your onward boarding pass, so you shouldn't need to stop to get one. And that timing still gives you a bit of margin for things to slip a bit.