Europe: Start voting now! Umm… Where did my wallet go? Off to Birmingham Airport
In this musical spectacular…
- Who wants to go to Eurovision?
- Where did my wallet go? Off to Birmingham Airport
- SN2038 Birmingham Airport to Brussels National Airport
- Some time at Brussels Airport
- SN3819 Brussels National Airport to Lisbon Airport with the AeroSmurf
- Into Lisbon and The Tuk Tuk Hostel
- Exploring Lisbon with a Canon 100D
- The Eurovision Song Contest
- Off to Porto with Comboios de Portugal
- Time at Porto Airport
- FR8513 Porto Airport to Birmingham Airport
- To the trains!
- Eurovision… Douze points!
To say I’ve been sleeping odd hours recently would be akin to saying I’ve been having a normal life.With me in the office “virtually” at 6:30 in the morning (before actually showing myself physically at 7am), a normal set of working hours has been beyond me.
So at 5am, I was wide awake. Unwelcome. But, at least I could pack. So I had that at least. As I was staying in a hostel, I slimmed down my travel bag heavily from normal.
So, no Canon 6D with a 50mm F1.2 or a 24-105 f4L, no laptop. Just my ageing HP Stream 8 Tablet and a Canon 100D with a 28-105 3.5-5.6 lens. Some changes of clothes… and that’s it for me.
The Entines bag is getting slowly worse. I’ve got to find a replacement. Soon. Meanwhile, #nonstopluggage is being classic in blue and yellow.
At 8:20 in the morning, I headed out of the flat, and got a Uber over to the train station. Whilst I could had taken the bus, my left leg had been acting up recently with a pulled muscle which has made naproxen my best friend in the world. So, I cheated and grabbed one. Thankfully, one played ball – and dropped me off at New Street station.
With the express train about to go, I went head to head with the ticket machine. Eventually, it spat out a single to Birmingham International station for £3.80, and I was on my way.
£3.80 later…
London Northwestern Railway Birmingham New Street to Birmingham International
Cost: £3.80
I boarded and sat down,.. And heard a thump on the floor. Odd I thought… but I settled down.
I then was unsettle when I couldn’t find my wallet.
Ladies and Gentlemen – you don’t want to know the swear words that were coming out my mouth.
I spent most of the journey hunting for it – and found the wallet was nestling just in the seat area in front of me (I thought it had fallen to the seat behind).
I’m taking my Pikachu home… well to Portugal actually.
Whilst I’m glad I split my wallet normally – I was nonetheless glad to find that wallet.
With that found, I could enjoy the short ride to Birmingham International Station. 12 minutes after the train departed New Street – I was closing in on the airport.
TUI Boeing 757-200
Exiting the train, I took the escalator up to the concourse level, and cleared the barrier.
Off the train and off we go.
That done, it was time to head into Birmingham Airport. That means taking the AirRail shuttle… that some people still can’t work out how to use (it’s rather simple – look at the sign at departure and line up at the door).
If you can’t understand which side the next train is going from…
Even if some were unhappy to travel.
A short ride, and I was in the main terminal.
I went down to check-in to grab my boarding passes for the day. Alas – Birmingham Airports common access equipment loves its thermal paper paper boarding passes, as opposed to proper card ones.
Boarding pass and bag tagged as a carry on bag, I headed up to security.
The airport can be a crapshoot when it comes to security wait times – and the latest extension to the security area seems to be for one purpose – to extend the queues.
Tensa-barrier central. Note the grey bit of floor – that’s were the old boarding pass checks were carried out
Rather quiet this morning.
Thankfully, there were no queues the day – apart from a short wait to get the bags scanned.
I was quickly on my way, and ready to run the risk – you guessed it – through the duty-free area.
Once through security and the duty-free hall, I checked the time – It was just after 9am. 40 minutes or so from the front door to cleared security – I could deal with that.
Another thing I could handle was a mug of coffee.
With an order placed at Jo and the Juice placed, I settled down to waking up slowly whilst at an airport… and pondering what I forgot to bring with me. Nothing off the top of my head – a bad sign normally.
Fuel.
I decided with a drink in hand, it was time to go off and watch planes for a bit. Least of all, I would be away from the madness of the departures area, and closer to the gate.
This way…
Hopscotch!
Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-900ER
Blue Air Boeing 737-800
TUI Boeing Boeing 787-8
A mixture of watching planes take off and land – and watching flightRadar24 gave me my hint when the Brussels Airlines A319 had landed and had reached the gate.
As well as looking out of the window
Well, it beats paying attention to Birmingham Airports screens that say wait in lounge (and subliminally.. Buy things please).
I headed off to gate 46, for the boarding pass and passport check.
Who wants a small Boeing 777-300ER model?
There was a queue that had built-up with the plane arriving – but the agents cleared the queue quickly.
There was a short wait to wait for everyone get off the plane, and the boarding call for priority passengers was made. That made, the call for everyone else to board at once was made.
The waiting Brussels Airlines Airbus A319
I took my leave of Birmingham Airport, ready to begin a new adventure.
Next: SN2038 Birmingham Airport to Brussels National Airport
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You really took your Pikachu to Portugal lol
It’s almost as if there’s a song in that 😉