Hey there! Today is part two of the Spontaneous trip to London story and I’ll be sharing the story of the journey to the UK with you guys. If you haven’t read part one yet, click here for more context on the story.
The journey to the airport
We decided to take the Flixbus to Eindhoven, Netherlands to take a flight from there to the UK. We ended up walking from Eindhoven Centrum to the airport which took us over 2 hours, which wasn’t really smart because we arrived in Eindhoven Centrum at 22:45.
We wanted to take a bus to the airport, but we didn’t want to waste money on tickets and we thought it’s only an hour and 40 mins, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Lol, according to Google it’s only supposed to take 1:37, but dinner, picture breaks, pranks and resting breaks made it took us so much longer, we arrived at the airport after 1am, but it was fun and we made it. Sadly when we arrived the airport was closed and we hadn’t booked a hotel, so we ended up taking turns on sleeping and guarding bags. We each slept like 30-45 mins each.
Luckily the airport opened at 4:30, so now we’re able to sit inside and work on our stuff. Our flight to the UK was going to leave at 9:15.
The journey to the plane
When we went to check in we had a problem with Alpha’s Passenger Location Form. He couldn’t fill it out because he didn’t have a valid passport. On the website it said that you could travel to the UK with either a valid European ID or a passport, but when filling out the PLF they specifically asked for a passport number and there wasn’t an option for an ID number. We weren’t allowed to check in before we had proof of his PLF.
Luckily the lady at the check in counter said that we weren’t the only people with the same problem, but sadly they couldn’t help us and the offices in the UK were not open yet, so calling them was not helpful at all and yes, we tried.
At this point Alpha was ready to throw in the towel, but I was too exhausted to go back to home without my needed break, so I started thinking of other ways.
We ended up going to the service counter and asked the lady there for help. She suggested that we fill out the ID details where the passport details are supposed to be and when we went on the gov.uk website and started filling it out. The form had changed from passport only to passport or ID number. Yes, it sounds surreal, but it really wasn’t there before. In a hurry we filled out the form and we were very happy that this had been solved, because now we could finally check in.
By the time we had solved the PLF issue, we were too late to check in so we ended up paying an extra fee just to check in and when we wanted to check the bag in, we realized that we had selected the wrong method and that instead of taking one big bag (which we thought would be smart and save us money), we had to take two sets of hand luggage. So to check in our big bag we also ended up paying extra. It was a mess.
After this I just wanted to cry on how our budget just went down the drain. By the time we got through security I was tired. We had hardly slept, the PLF was such a struggle, I hadn’t eaten in over 15 hours and I was slightly *cough, cough* irritated. So when just before boarding, the crew called me aside and said that I couldn’t board the plane, I was angry to say the least. After another 5 minutes of trying to stay calm they finally cleared us to board the plane. We were on our way to the UK! 😀
Arrival in the UK
We were so relieved that we were able to arrive safely. At the English border we had to go into separate lines though, because I was entering the country with my passport and Alpha used his ID, which by the time you’re reading this won’t even be a valid way to enter the UK anymore. This caused quite some stress, because his line took way longer than mine and we weren’t sure whether he was in the clear or not. Luckily he was and we could finally say: we made it into the UK!
We vlogged everything as well, so if you want to watch the video of this experience, e watching the vlog of this trip, you will find it on Alpha’s youtube channel, click here to watch.
If you want to read more posts like this click here.
If you want to keep up with my day to day journey, click here.
