We began our 2018 adventure when our son in law dropped us off at the SeaTac airport on what turned out to the busiest travel day of the year with 70,000 passengers traveling through the airport. We checked in at Lufthansa but they told u we likely would not make the flight as we were numbers 5 & 6 on the standby list. So we inquired at the Virgin Atlantic counter, and they had room so we cancelled our Lufthansa listing and listed on the Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow in England and then we will take a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
When we checked in at Virgin Atlantic they said there was only one seat left, but the counter agent said you should just try and see if someone doesn't show up. The ticket counter personnel were super friendly and helpful and that turned out to be true throughout our contacts with Virgin Atlantic personnel. It took a while to get through security, even with TSA Precheck, and we made our way to the gate area.
At the gate, the agent said it was going to be a full flight, but they kept paging one passenger. Finally after most everyone had boarded, they called our names and we had seats on a 4 day old BRAND NEW 787 Dreamliner to Heathrow. We got the last two seats of the 291 passengers on this flight. As we boarded the flight, the gate agents who also helped us at the counter, were thrilled that we had seats. One even had gone the extra mile to schedule out other carrier alternatives for us. That was going above and beyond in terms of customer service.
We've flown on the Dreamliner before, and it's now probably my favorite long haul airplane. The seats are comfortable even in economy. I had a nice chicken meatball dinner and watched a couple movies and had a good chat with the chap next to me who works for Amazon out of the UK.
It's probably worth noting that now we've flown on Virgin Australia, Virgin America, and now Virgin Atlantic. All have been impressive flights.
At Heathrow it was an hour to get through the border control checkpoint and we missed our connecting flight. The border agent advised us that for future trips to let their personnel know we have a connecting flight and we could bypass the line.
We then collected our luggage and with some help learned that we had to find our way to terminal 2 from Terminal 3 where we had landed. It was about a 10 minute walk through the labyrinth of tunnels and escalators to terminal 2 where we saw there was a 10:30am flight to Frankfurt. So I relisted us for that flight and we checked in our luggage and immediately got assigned seats since it was not a full flight.
The security check was the most stringent we've experienced. My backpack was selected because of all of the electronics and Angela's was selected because of liquid deodorant. Once we got through security it was a short walk to the gate and boarding was quick and easy.
The flight to Frankfurt was a little over an hour, but it took over an hour to pass through the border check. There was only one border agent and the line was consistently 400 people long. Just as we reached the agent, 2 more lines opened up. Our new passports now have UK and German entry stamps.
Our TLS shuttle was waiting for us after we waited another 20 minutes for our luggage to arrive and we were quickly driven the one hour drive to Knopf Tours in Heidelberg. Stefan, the owner, greeted us around 3 pm, and we were assigned one of the upper rooms.
We retrieved our stored bike gear and I spent some time reinstalling it and sorting out some small fixes. The bike started fine after being stored for two years. While we were starting to feel the effects of being awake over 24 hours, we walked over to a local Lidl supermarket to purchase some cheap soda water and Coke Zero before walking downtown to get some Euros and enjoy a pizza.
Back at Knopf Tours we enjoyed more conversation with other riders. It's really fun to hear of their adventures. We took showers before getting to bed at 9pm for some much needed sleep. By the way, we typically stay here for at least two days to help reset our biological clocks.
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