We are currently wallowing in the tropical sunshine of Goa! This is thanks largely to thirty years of shopping with Sainsburys and then Tesco, so that we have accumulated a vast number of Airmiles. These can only be used on BA flights starting and ending in UK, so we have spent a lot of time planning for three weeks away from home. We flew from Fuerteventura to London Stansted on Feb 2nd, arriving in the afternoon and expecting to see some English countryside on our coach journey to Heathrow. We had forgotten it is dark by 3.30! It was also raining and bitterly cold; and within half an hour we had thrown a tantrum about British rip-offs! This is normal, we have found! This time it was a Spectrum internet station which ate a pound coin and refused to play ball, and when the man at the Information desk dragged himself away from a Polish conversation he told us we would need to ring a 0870 number for a refund! Grrr!
.. but National Express let us get on an earlier coach than booked (and is half-price for over 60s!) and we got to Terminal 5, where we found Adnams real ale, M&S supper ingredients and a wonderful BA employee, who did what we were not permitted to do until the next morning and issued us with boarding passes. We took the shuttle to a hotel and back next morning for a bit more frustration. Despite the stunning surroundings BA have a barmy baggage drop system which is slower (if you are unlucky) than ordinary check-in procedures. However, when we boarded all this was forgiven!
We had one of the new 777s, a third full! This made for a very comfortable 8 hour flight - particularly with use of the seat-back entertainment system offering a menu of about 600 films, TV programs, audio and music tracks. We arrived in Mumbai shortly after midnight, and procedures there were predictably slow and inefficient. We spent an age trying to find the free shuttle bus to the domestic terminal, each transit through a door requiring three police to consult about us and then grudgingly allowing us through. We walked around outside the terminal looking for a beer and gave up, then took a taxi to the terminal seeing probably enough of Mumbai to last for a while. More confusion at that terminal, no beer, and a wait until 3.20 am for check-in and an expensive couple of beers. The flight with Go was full, and there were very few Europeans on it. At Goa we waited until sunrise then took a taxi down South to Palolem. Just over an hour of hooting and hairy manoevres, and here we are!