FRIDAY, 31 OCTOBER 2025

(Heathrow, UK – Las Vegas, NV)

[Editor’s note: regular readers will recall that the outbound blog tends to get a little lengthy, so get your cup of tea, maybe a biscuit, and settle in…]

I woke up a bit before eight o’clock and read my book for half an hour. No need to be up and at ‘em quite yet. The first order of the day was breakfast, followed by showers and then the trip back to Terminal 3. The slowest part of this was waiting for a lift down to the subway link tunnel. Once there, though, progress was speedy.

When I went to check in online yesterday, there was a bargain basement offer to upgrade to Upper Class…. After a quick consultation, and a phone call to the lovely Virgin people, we were duly reallocated seats at the front of the plane. As a result, this morning we had no queue for bag drop, used the Upper Class security channel (no queue, no need to take anything out of our bags, and a whizzy shoe scanner that worked without taking your shoes off) and proceeded to the lounge to have a drink and wait for our flight to be called. All very lovely and civilised!

Towards the end of our stay we noticed someone else getting a portion of chips. Noting that we wouldn’t be eating until after 3pm, by which time breakfast would be a fading memory, we put in an order. Sadly, we’d left it a bit late and our flight was caused just before the chips arrived. Still, we tackled one portion between us and can confirm they were truly excellent. If there’s a next time, we’ll get the order in earlier!

We then marched to our gate, which had already started boarding to the extent that there wasn’t much of a queue to get on board. We found our seats (due our last minute deal we were at opposite ends and opposite sides of the cabin) and got ourselves settled in. The pilots were ready early but unfortunately air traffic had no slots, so we pushed back on time at 2pm, drove around the airfield for fifteen minutes, joined the queue for the runway, and then departed at 2.23pm. The first five minutes, rising through the rain and clouds were quite bumpy but after that it smoothed out. It stayed smooth for the first four hours, which was great, as it meant the 3 course meal wasn’t interrupted or difficult to eat.

Clouds were intermittent over the UK, cleared a little over the sea, and then covered over in a solid mass all the way to, and over, Greenland, and I thought that I wouldn’t be able to offer you photos of icebergs and glaciers, lit by the golden light of the late afternoon sun. But, just when I had all but given up hope, the cloud cleared over the western side of Greenland, near Sisimiut.

As we came overhead Canada (accompanied by a round of lemon sorbet) the air got a little lumpy and the seat belt signs came on. Fortunately it didn’t last too long, although the captain was clearly risk averse and didn’t switch the sign off for ages.

Somewhere over the northern edge of Hudson Bay it was time for cheese toasties, accompanied by a few more lumps and bumps. By now it was back to being cloudy, so there was not much to report on outside the window.  When we crossed back over land I decided to have a lie down and rest, which turned out to be quite good timing as it got bumpy yet again, and I don’t mind as much when I’m lying down. A couple of hours away from landing I got up and readied myself for the imminent high tea -sandwiches, quiche, scone and cake – not that I could eat it all. 

We saw some of the desert in Montana, and there was a brief glimpse of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming but it was generally either cloudy or, as we got nearer Vegas, smoggy and murky, especially given the low sun angle. Whilst it had been late afternoon when we passed over Greenland, by heading both west and south, it was now still an hour or so before sunset.

We landed at about 4.50pm, an hour ahead of schedule. We cleared immigration smoothly and, after a bit of wait, scooped up all three suitcases and headed outside into the heat. Whereupon we played hunt the shuttle bus that would take us to the car rental. Signs were minimal, but Andrew spotted it at the furthest end of the terminal from where we were…of course. Luckily, there was a shuttle waiting when we got there, we just fitted on, and it departed immediately.

At Alamo we completed the paperwork and went to find a car. Just got a change, we liked the first one in the row. It was a Wagoneer like last year, but a nice grey colour rather than white. We packed all our belongings in and made it way to the exit. Once there however, they didn’t think it had satellite radio, which is reasonably useful to us, given we’re often a long way from anywhere. So we had to drive back, park up, and we transferred all of our stuff to an older, white version. At which point another helpful assistant confirmed that the original one did, in fact, have the radio… We moved everything back to the original car and headed for the exit once more. 

Given that it was now dinner time, we stopped off at Denny’s for a light tea (yes, I know, but it will be many hours until breakfast!) which was on our way to the hotel. After that, we got to the hotel, checked in, and showered before bed. Ah, the joy of that first, post-travel shower!