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England: Around London: Vacation Day 03/17 & I hate easyBus

Nada and me spent our second day in London and we walked around Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park and in Kensington Gardens. In the afternoon we returned to our CS host Michael and we said goodbye to each other. Thanks Michael for hosting us!

Buckingham Palace became the official royal palace of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

 

Top of Victoria Memorial and the Flag of the United Kingdom on Buckingham Palace

Bloody Tourists just have to be everywhere

Equestrian Statue of the Duke of Wellington

 

Around Kensington Palace

Waiting for the bus with our lunch

And then we waited for easyBus from 17:50 till our departure time on 18:15. And time was 18:15 and there was no bus nor the driver. Everybody there was already a bit nervous. Just when me and Nada decided to call a Taxi, the driver showed up at 18:50 and we quickly jumped in and here the story should continue "and we left towards the airport", but it doesn't. The driver didn't let one of the families on the bus, because of the overweight luggage. His sharp fed up eyes measured that 20 cm x 40 cm x 60 cm is over 20 kg, and so we waited another 10 minutes at the bus station so that both parties agreed for £10 extra fee. Off course without a receipt. We left exactly at 19:00, 45 minutes after the schedule, but we still had hope, that we will catch our plane to Iceland. The standard and quickest route from London to Gatwick terminals is London -> Gatwick South Terminal -> Gatwick North Terminal. Since this was our first day without a beer, we should've known, that even here, the driver will take the longest route, first to North Terminal and then to South. We arrived to our drop off point exactly at 20:15. Our hopes to catch our plane from LGW to KEF, flight number 206, were close to zero, still we run with our luggage to bag drop desk, but it was closed and even at the information centre they couldn't help us anymore.

Our plane to Keflavík International Airport left at 20:40 and all we could do was to check for other options how to get to Iceland. Information centre checked some of them for us, but all flights in 24 hour time were full. We got the same confirmation when we connected to the internet, therefore we started to think how and where we will spend the night. Our decision was, that we rent a car for a day, drive outside somewhere and sleep till the morning. And so we rented Toyota Aygo at enterprise rent-a-car. Since they weren't cheap we made a deal for 1 day only.

Here we were in Toyota Aygo (baby sister of my Toyota Auris at home, so she got the name Angelca junior), still in England, driving around at night searching for a place to sleep. We found it near Newchapel, Surrey.

Good Night with 2 thoughts.

At least you can always find a good thing in bad experiences. How many of you have missed the plane? Nearly doesn't count. ☺
How many of you have the knowledge, that at least a beer a day keeps the problems away?

Some nice easyBus articles:
Dangerous service, absent customer service: welcome to easybus
EasyBus hits the brakes as 'lost driver' arrives at airport over 90 minutes late
Easybus reviews on TrustPilot