Back onto our original holiday schedule

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On our original travel plans, we should have been arriving at Gatwick this afternoon on an EasyJet plane from Tenerife South. EasyJet were really excellent and refunded the fare for us on compassionate grounds.

Unfortunately, last week we had to be in UK for George´s Mums funeral, so our holiday got extended by almost one week.

Today we arrived at Gatwick Airport by hire car that we had picked up from Birmingham Airport last Wednesday. They gave the hire car a good inspection then we were pleased when they confirmed there was no damage. This is always a tense moment as we have had some bad experiences previously with UK car hire companies.

As the car park in the Gatwick North Terminal is still shut because of ongoing structural issues, the car was returned to the South Terminal. We then loaded two trolleys with our entire luggage and made our way to the Premier Inn for a prepaid / non-refundable overnight stay within the North Terminal. When not staying with family, Premier Inn is always our first choice. The staff at this Premier Inn have recently got to know us as a repeat customer which comes with benefits.

On the journey here, we discovered that the suitcases were not weighted quite right. Emirates baggage allowance is a vast 30kg per person made up normally of two bags. We currently have only three bags totalling about 50kg between the two of us, but our hand luggage is over the 7kg each that we are allowed. A little bit of moving around will even this all out. We have a small holdall with us that is for hold stowage, so that came in handy too. Dilemma promptly solved.

In the past we have found the food available in the terminals at Gatwick to be a bit unappealing. So tonight we decided that we would start the holiday off right and have dinner at the hotel. Looking through the menu, they do a meal deal of a two course dinner, a drink and breakfast for £22.99 each. That seemed really good value and sorts out the issue of what we will eat in the morning as well. In reality it means we pay for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow is completely free.

The meal we had this evening was really good, and very wholesome and tasty. Really glad we took this option. We could not say as much for the lady sat at the table next to us. She had fish and chips and the fish looked to be well overcooked rather than the light and fluffy batter that it should have been. Did see that she took a photo of it and put onto Facebook, but not sure if she complained or not. We think probably not.

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