FRIDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2023.

(Atlanta, GA – Manchester, UK)

It’s weird waking up on a Friday morning in America, and knowing you’ll go to bed on Saturday at home. Although it feels like that will make it a very long day, we’ll be home in (hopefully) 22 hours time. Which is still long, but less than the day and a half that it seems. We also slept for over 9 hours last night, despite jumping forward two hours.

We went down and got breakfast, which was sufficiently filling to keep us going for a while. We enquired again about a late checkout, which wasn’t available yesterday when we arrived. This time, the answer was more favourable, and they extended it from 11am to 1pm. Taking advantage of this, we decided to sit and read books by the pool. The weather was pleasant. As Andrew described it, a bit like a nice day at home (not in November…it was 19C), warm but overcast and not humid. Indeed, it was so much like home that, 25 minutes later, it started raining. We went back inside.

Still, it was nice to have a room to relax in, charge electrical devices, read and watch TV. We showered and got ready for the last leg of travel. We checked out just prior to 1pm and the shuttle bus was ready and waiting. We expected that we’d have to get the airport shuttle from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, as we had on arrival, because the hotel shuttle driver is only allowed to go to the domestic terminal. We were the only passengers for the hotel shuttle on this trip, however, and whilst I’m “not saying nothing to nobody”…our journey to the international terminal was significantly more straightforward than might have been the case…

We had plenty of time at the airport. Having arrived shortly after 1pm, and with the bag drop potentially not opening until 3.30pm, we’re couldn’t yet progress through security. We decided to sit outside and enjoy the ‘fresh air’ for a while (complete with the wafting smell of kerosene). We had a view of places taking off, people get dropped off, and the general hustle of an airport, albeit a lot quieter and more pleasant than the domestic terminals had been. We could see plane tail fins moving around on the other side of a wall like sharks’ fins.

After an hour I went for a wander and came back to impart a couple of pieces of information. Firstly, bag drop was open early. Secondly, there actually were planes with sharks on the fins, named great white sharks…

After dropping off the cases we decided to have a latte and a snack in a relaxing coffee shop, complete with a view of the apron and relaxing jazz music, before going to security. It was now about 3pm. Security wasn’t quite as quick as Denver, but thanks to being able to skip part of the line, we were through in about 25 minutes.

We made our way to the Delta lounge, only to find there was a queue for that too, due to it being full to capacity. This was because it was raining and the sky deck was closed. We only waited about 10 minutes though, before a departing flight resulted in some people leaving and we were able to go in. And there we sat for our remaining hours before boarding, availing ourselves of the drinks and snacks, reading our books and generally waiting for departure.