Cotswold Eagle

This needs just a little care with the name of the hotel. The HGI London Heathrow Airport is actually at Hatton Cross, one tube stop from the airport. But it sounds as if you have booked HGI London Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3, which is actually attached to Terminal 2 by a covered walkway, so ideal for your flight. As you are sticking to your plan to stay at the airport, in your shoes I would look into the possibility of a transfer straight to Heathrow from Tilbury, rather than in to the centre of town, It is, of course, a longer transfer, but you wouldn't have to worry about hauling your bags around - drop them at the hotel and then jump on to one of those trains into town for your day sightseeing, safe in the knowledge your luggage is where it needs to be. I haven't looked at the relative costs or timings, though, I must admit!

I can see no advantage to staying at Heathrow in this scenario. If you can cancel your reservation, I would suggest finding a hotel in town, drop your bags there, enjoy the day and evening in London, have a leisurely start the next day and only head out to the airport when you need to for the afternoon flight.

Didn’t you answer this question in your own post? There are several operators in London (and other European cities). Big Bus and City Sightseeing are international brands. Different routes. There is a wealth of information about them on this board and online. As m’colleague from Scotland says, they should not be confused with a transport pass to quickly and conveniently get around a city. Two different requirements.

Oh, shops can take whatever they like as payment - glass beads, if they wish. My point is that Manx notes are the equivalent of glass beads as they do not represent British pounds and are not legal currency. They cannot be paid into a British pounds denominated bank account, unlike Scottish or Northern Ireland notes, so a shop might get stuck with them or need special exchange arrangements (some currency exchanges will take them, but it's not a foreign exchange transaction either....) This is why the Manx government states, "the Manx pound, which is equivalent in value to its United Kingdom counterpart, however can not be spent outside of the Isle of Man".

Legal tender has absolutely no relevance to what means of payment shops choose (and it is entirely their choice) to accept. A business can’t be forced to accept anything. Legal tender has an extremely narrow, technical meaning. As it happens, Scottish banknotes aren’t even legal tender in Scotland. The real question is are they legal currency throughout the U.K. and Scottish and Northern Irish notes are because they are recognised by the U.K. Parliament as being denominated in pounds sterling (British pounds). Pounds issued by the Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories and Gibraltar are entirely different currencies backed by their own governments, who have chosen unilaterally to peg them at par with sterling and to make British pounds legal currencies in their territories.

Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man is not part of the UK. As mentioned up thread, it is a Crown Dependency.

Some confusion here, I think. Golden Tours ARE one of the four(?) Hop On Hop Off bus operators in London.

Funnily enough, I saw a sign just the other day, "We are unable to take Scottish or Northern Ireland notes at the moment" and it struck me you don't see that as much these days. The 'at the moment' made me wonder if there'd been a spate of forgeries in the (tourist hotspot) area.

The OP has also posted in the Spain board, where this question belongs, so I’d suggest further replies should be in that thread for the benefit of others too.

Do you mean Keukenhof Gardens? On King’s Day or are you staying in Delft? From Delft, I think your best public transport route would be train to Leiden and then the special bus to Keukenhof from the station there. Combination transport and entry tickets will be available from the Keukenhof website next month: https://keukenhof.nl/en/

The UK’s ETA scheme is, of course, nothing to do with ETIAS. As it happens it has just come into effect, but only for Qatari nationals, and will apply to nationals of some other Middle East countries from February. Eventually, it will apply worldwide. https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/10/25/electronic-travel-authorisation-eta-scheme-factsheet-june-2023/ The point of any ETA scheme is that they only apply to people who do not need, and do not have, a visa. I am not really sure what you mean by this, I’m afraid! The UK is a third country in EU terms and the UK’ s ETA will eventually apply to EU citizens, as ETIAS will apply to those of the UK.

It’s not a “proposal” - the ETIAS Regulation is a legal act of the EU, so the Commission is required to implement it. Article 18 of the Regulation sets the fee (€7) and exempts under 18s and over 70s from paying it. The fee can be changed (through delegated acts by the Commission) to cover costs, which is a requirement.

Yes, that's the Council's current timeline. I'm not sure if the EES delay is the sole reason - unless they look further into decoupling, ETIAS can only be about 6 months after EES, but that assumes all is well in the ETIAS programme too! I'd take Spring 2025 as a 'no earlier than' date 🤣

When the Parliament agreed the text of the Regulation in July 2018, the Commission was saying “end of 2021”. I doubt any Euro-watchers believed that even then, though 😂 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_4367 Following their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (EUR-Lex), the regulations will enter into force 20 days later, which will enable eu-LISA to start building the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) and make these new information systems operational by the end of 2021.

But you were in the lounge 75 minutes before that flight, why would you want to leave earlier? 😀 You can only book a slot from three days before. You fill in your flight details and the system will give you suggested slots based on their predictions. You can usually choose from really quite early to very early indeed!! This all assumes you won't have fast track through status or booking, nor Previum.

Never a bad thing 😀 Personally, I would have been very relaxed about your flight, but everyone's risk appetite is different, and it certainly removes any last night worries and allows you to have a carefree disembarkation rather than scrambling off at 7 am!

I wouldn't bother. AMS had a horror with security delays last summer (and I don't know why CruiserBruce didn't just say that!). I don't know what his source is for saying that it's not completely fixed, but there are no systemic delays there at all now to the best off my knowledge. In any case, the appointment system mitigates the risk.

Yes, very good point, although the walk from the Hilton is at least all under cover. I think people just like to feel that they are at the right terminal! And if you are going to use the station more than once, maybe that goes in its favour. But the transit to the South Terminal from the North is so easy and both the Sofitel and Premier Inn are right by it, as you say, so I'd always go there. It's nothing like LHR, which is more like 3 separate airports sharing two runways 😀

As long as you understand the concept (nature of the rooms and lack of anything else in the hotel), why not? Personally, I like to have somewhere to eat or drink that isn’t an airport outlet, but that’s a choice. The Courtyard by Marriott is about a 10 minute walk (signposted, I think) from the South Terminal. I don’t know it all, I’m afraid.

It’s absolutely fine and obviously marginally more convenient for the South Terminal and the station. Also more facilities, such as a gym. I use the Premier Inn purely on price, although there are good rates to be had at the Hilton (I just looked and it seems to have a standard HH members’ advance rate of £136, which is tempting - the nature of most of my travel is short term planning and I have seen it at £170, I think) - essentially I trade off the price of my dinner for the inconvenience of using the inter-terminal shuttle!

Another vote for the Premier Inn North Terminal. It is literally across a road from the North Terminal and the first thing you come to is the station for the inter-terminal shuttle to get to the South Terminal in a few minutes. It's huge (about 700 rooms, I think) and at busy times the restaurant and bar can get little overwhelmed in my experience, although I think staffing issues have eased. If you want dinner, book a table at the restaurant as soon as you check in. In recent times it's consistently been about £100 per room.

Airline pricing is generally a lot more nuanced than that, using various revenue management strategies. Advice is quite often not to buy when tickets first go on sale as prices may be set high to 'catch' people who have plans and want to secure the flights. Similarly, it is not unusual for prices to rise towards the flight date, as airlines know there will be a percentage of last minute travellers who are not particularly price sensitive. Google Flights have various tools that can help with this and I certainly wouldn't dismiss a Christmas trip on the basis it might be expensive, when now might be a great time to book 🎅😀

I don’t know the significance of you saying this, but Warren Street is not particularly close to King’s Cross - it’s the best part of a mile away. Only two stops on the tube, though.

Not this year. The Royal Ballet are doing at the Royal Opera House throughout December and in to January, though.

This question really should be in a separate thread. This one is about eating in Southampton, so even by CC standards staying in Portsmouth is considerable thread creep!