Our journey to Gatwick was painfully slow, in fact we crawled down virtually the whole length of the M1 and the M25 and arrived at the Premier Inn at about 3pm. It didn't matter as we had plenty of time and couldn't have checked in before 2pm anyway! I'm just glad that we were were staying overnight and not catching a flight today!
After dumping our hand luggage bags in the room, we headed over to the South Terminal to get our bearings. It was a shortish walk to the North Terminal and we could easily have stayed at the Premier Inn we used last year but it didn't matter. Our hotel was fine and had a restaurant and a bar and a huge car park so we were happy.
Once at the South Terminal, we found the Virgin Twilight Check-in desk and then headed to Costa Coffee for a much needed refreshment! I shared a sandwich and a muffin with Sophie and we took Mikey a sandwich as he'd opted to stay in the room (he was plugged into his iPod!).
We had about 45 minutes to kill before we all trooped back over to the airport and once again, took the Monorail to our terminal. It was very busy with a lot of people hurrying about and I braced myself for more crowds tomorrow as a Bank Holiday weekend is looming.
We found a queue of people at the Twilight Check-in and waited about half an hour until it was our turn. I'd packed five bags, the fifth being a small holdall that I'd used for our toiletries and shoes. It weighed about 8 kilos and when he asked how many bags I was checking in and I told him, he asked if we wanted to pay for the extra bag! Oh...I thought that you could check in more bags if the overall weight allowance was OK, but it seems not! It would cost £65 to put the bag through so we hurriedly emptied it of all the shampoos and stuff and shoved them into Sophie's already heavy suitcase! I then started worrying that all the toiletries would explode and cover all Sophie's clothes in a gooey mess!
All our other suitcases were well under the 23kg allowance so with that completed and a few laughs with the very good-natured check-in man, we scurried back over to the hotel for a much needed drink!
In our absence, the hotel had filled up considerably and the bar and restaurant were full of families and couples eating and drinking and making merry before their holidays. We'd booked a table for 8pm and enjoyed a great meal in the Thyme restaurant with a few more drinks (was the last time Sophie could legitimately have an alcoholic beverage in a restaurant on this holiday) and then retired to bed at around 10pm. Tomorrow will be a long day!
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