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12 hour stop over at Heathrow
kachofool
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all,
Doing a bit of traveling and I have a 12-hour stopover at Heathrow... anyone have any suggestions as to what to do during this time? 12 hours is a lot!
Doing a bit of traveling and I have a 12-hour stopover at Heathrow... anyone have any suggestions as to what to do during this time? 12 hours is a lot!
kachofool on
0
Posts
Here is the schedule of the train, it seems to take only 16 minutes so that's sweet. http://plannerint.b-rail.be/bin/query.exe/n?S=Heathrow+Terminal+1!&Z=London!&start=1&L=b-rail (That's a Belgian site for some reason, first result on Google for "distance heathrow london".
http://www.heathrowexpress.com/Home
It leaves every fifteen minutes (both ways) and takes about the same in journey time. You'll need to allow time to get back and check in and so forth, but twelve hours is probably enough to do pretty much any of the London sights as long as you aren't arriving at 3 am or whatever.
Just another question about Heathrow in general. Is quarantine always just 1 dude standing in a walkway and you go talk to him if you want to declare? That just seems to foreign to me. In Australia when you return to the country, quarantine officials check all your luggage in depth at these tables, 50%+ on a busy day, 90%+ on a slow one. Makes coming home take so long with immigration then this.
Quarantine is in general like this in most major European airports. (My experience, Heathrow, Amsterdam.) Depending on where you're flying from, they will pick out more people than normal, but only if there's a particular incentive. You'll be fine if you're flying from America and such.
You should always expect to get spot searched though, cause I'm sure they have a quota of random checks that they need to meet.
Heh heh my family have a game at the airport. Its called go through the metal detector and see how long it will be before mum gets searched by the dude on the other side. We always win. There is one guy doing 'random' pat downs on the other side. EVERY SINGLE TIME mum gets caught. She must have a look of fear or something. Its hilarious.
Once you figure an hour of playing silly buggers in the airport to get out, 45 mins to get into London, 45 mins to get back, 3 hours of security and queuing, you don't have that much time. If you're arriving or leaving during rush hour or at night you'll have even less.
Amusingly, last time I flew out from Heathrow I arrived three hours early only to discover there were no queues whatsoever. It took me about 15 minutes to get through everything. The longest bit was printing out my ticket. Lufthanser are awesome. That was a unique, once-a-lifetime experience though.
There would be a lot of arsing about on public transport though - high speed train to the city, then buses or tubes depending on where you go. That will eat up a bit of time. Here is the official Journey Planner for London Public transport, it will help you time your trips - it is pretty accurate too
You could try something else, weather dependent. There are a couple of nice parks/gardens near Heathrow - like Richmond/Kew to the east of the airport maybe 30 minutes travel, as well as Hampton Court Palace, maybe 45 minutes travel. Or to the west, there is Windsor Castle/Park/Eton, again about 30 minutes
During the week or weekend?