Tallinn Tier Point Run – 2am at a Birmingham Coach Station and a bit of T3

Tallinn Tier Point Run – 2 am at a Birmingham Coach Station

In this trip report:

• 400TP to Go…
• 2 am at a Birmingham Coach Station and Heathrow Airport
  
• The new The Cathay Pacific Lounge at Heathrow
• AY3126 Heathrow to Helsinki
• Helsinki Airport Finnair Gate 22 Lounge
• AY107 Helsinki to Tallinn
• Exploring the old town of Tallinn
• Hotel Ulmestie
• Back to Tallinn Airport
• AY118 Tallinn to Helsinki
• The Finnair Gate 39 Premium Lounge
• AY381 Helsinki to Heathrow with an Airbus A350
• A Delayed Ride Home
• 200 Tier Points down… Let’s Tallinn that again!

2:00. Birmingham Coach Station. Again

All my adventures seem to commence at 2 am at Birmingham Coach Station. After an evening of minimal sleep, I was on my way to the coach station.

Well, all my best adventures start with me being sleep deprived. It helps or something

The coach station in the dead of night.

In coach entertainment? I was going try this out, sadly – this wasn’t enabled on the coach services I was due to be aboard.

Information… Information.

Coach 210 was due to start its trip to the London airports – but not before there were people giving negative attitude to the coach driver.

Sadly, politeness is in short supply these days in Birmingham.

Number 210 to Gatwick…

Also what was missing was people being quiet at 2:20 in the morning – this included the coach driver and his assistant were in full loud chatting mode – which is fine… at 2:20 in the afternoon. 2:20 in the morning –  you just want a little quiet.

The coach made its way from Birmingham Coach station to Birmingham Airport, then Coventry (where thankfully there was a driver change… and thus a bit of peace and quiet, then onto Banbury, High Wycombe Coachway, and finally (for me) Heathrow Airport Terminal 2-3.

Although I found a new Pokemon at Coventry bus station.

I’ll be honest – one of the things I like to do on a coach is to try and rest my head and doze off. And it’s easy to do on motorways… not so easy on smaller roads.

Legroom

Thankfully, I got an hours rest in before the coach dived under the Heathrow runway, and into the Central Bus station.

This way…

Welcome to Heathrow!

It was time to dive into the warren that is Heathrow Airport. With overhead routes closed to walk to Terminal 3, it was a case of exploring the warren of tunnels

With Check-in already open, I headed over to Terminal 3. I decided to time this on the way back – just in case I had to rush for my coach.

Turns out it didn’t – but that’s another chapter.

I arrived at T3 departures, and after checking the zones – I needed head to Zone E.

Name that zone in one.

Yup. Christmas.

This area is inhabited primarily by American Airlines, with Finnair having a few desks to the side.

My boarding passes for the outbound segments were issued… and as the check-in time had passed, the boarding passes for the return segments were also ready for pick up.

With some attractive boarding passes in hand – I headed upstairs and over to the fast track.

Fast Track at Terminal 3 is something you don’t want to miss. Why? It skips out the joy of the maze that is the Duty-Free shop. Thankfully at 5:30 in the morning, it was still quiet, so I was through the other side of the Fast Track in 5 minutes flat.

With that done, I had a quick check in Boots for a couple of things – one of those was some leggings. And then I thought I wouldn’t need them.

I really should have got some leggings here

Meanwhile, I can’t seem to escape the BBC Travel Show team no matter where I go in the world. 

That decision came back to haunt me later.

Choose your lounge…

With the actions done I needed to do, I headed to the lounge complex. Now, I had *many* choices here:

• The British Airways Lounge
• The American Airlines Lounge
• The Number One Lounge (Contracted by Finnair)
• The new Cathay Pacific Lounge

A bit of umming and ahhing, and I decided there was a new lounge to try… let’s go for that.

Next: The Cathay Pacific London Heathrow Lounge

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