Globaliser

To be fair, AA-AA ITD is 1:15. Suppressed lines omitted: Minimum Connect Times: Connecting at JFK Incoming airline AA Outgoing airline AA Flight type International to Domestic STANDARD.D/D...D/I...I/D...I/I. ONLINE 1.00 1.15 1.45 2.00 OFFLINE 1.00 1.15 1.45 2.00 ** OR * ARE ALL AA-AA ID 1.15 ... **-AA ID 2.00 TRM 7 - 8 ... .

Yes it is, if you can manage your luggage up the stairs. It is what I would do. The stairs up from the eastbound District Line platform (which is where you would be if coming from Heathrow) are intended to be one-way going up. So immediately after a train arrives, the stairs are at their busiest. It's worth waiting 30 seconds or so (depending on how many people get off) until the batch of arriving passengers has gone up the stairs, and then you should feel no time pressure while you get your luggage up the stairs.

There's step-free access down to the westbound District Line. Take that to Barons Court. Change cross-platform to the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow. It's worth noting that Wimbledon trains don't go to Barons Court, so it's easiest simply to avoid those. (The same with the occasional trains heading to Parsons Green and Kensington Olympia.) Also don't get on a Circle Line train by accident, as they don't go to Barons Court either. But the majority of trains will.

I think this thread is about boats, not buses. For buses, there are lots of other threads. Try these: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2923080-london-hop-onhop-off-bus-question https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2932870-london-red-bus-hop-on-hop-off https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2943268-hoho-bus-in-london https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2963916-big-bus-hop-on-hop-off-bus https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2971702-hop-on-hop-off-in-london https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2984492-hoho-bus-in-london-and-pre-cruise-in-london https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3010625-london-hop-on-hop-off-bus Personally, I recommend these: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/ - there are far more routes and they're far cheaper (no more than £5.25 for a whole day, no matter how many journeys you take).

What would be the advantage of this? Unless there's something particularly wonderful about this hotel breakfast, there are a large number of good and varied options within a few minutes' walk from the hotel. Amongst other things, a branch of Gail's has just opened at 437 Strand (on the north side of the road in the Coutts building) - and I mention that only because it's new.

If you're fit and mobile enough to take the Tube, then the obvious (to me) route from this hotel is to walk down the hill to Embankment Tube, take the westbound District Line to Barons Court, and cross-platform change (about 10 feet) to the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow. The primary disadvantage of this is that at Embankment you'd have to carry your bags down one level from the ticket hall to the westbound District Line platform - it's about the height of 1½ stories of a domestic house. Without a doubt, this is what I would do. The Northern Line from Embankment or Charing Cross to Tottenham Court Road, and then changing there to the Elizabeth Line, is feasible. But at either Embankment or Charing Cross, there'll be some luggage wrangling involved. Changing at Tottenham Court Road involves quite a bit of walking and probably a number of lifts (or escalators, if you dare) - but I don't know the new routes well enough to be sure of how many. Other disadvantages include a lower frequency of trains and the extra cost. Changing from the Northern Line to the Piccadilly Line at Leicester Square with luggage doesn't seem to me to have any advantages over either of those options. If you're going to take a taxi from the hotel to Tottenham Court Road Elizabeth Line, it may be worth asking the driver to take you up to the very top end of Dean Street, where the western Elizabeth Line entrance is located. It's in a quiet dead end street, and there will be much less hassle and pressure when you get out of the cab, compared to trying to get out of the cab on either Charing Cross Road or Oxford Street if you use the eastern entrances. The entrance itself is also distinctly less busy and much more pleasant to use.

With one exception, all the river services are intolerably slow if you want to use them as transport, and are really designed to be leisurely river cruises as others have said. The exception is Thames Clippers, which operates fast catamarans. Although they can't operate at high speed in central London, they are still faster than the tourist cruises. They do operate at high speed downstream (east) of Wapping, where their benefit is greatest if you happen to want to go to/from places on the river near their piers. If you want to use the river for hop-on hop-off transport, this is probably the only practicable option. That's underlined by it being part of the Transport for London network, so that you can (for example) pay with Oyster. (However, Thames Clipper fares are not integrated into the main TfL fare structure, and TfL fare caps don't apply.) Thames Clippers has hop-on, hop-off fares that may suit you if you want to use them for this.

It won't, primarily because there's no such thing as "full" on these trains except on the rare occasions that you simply cannot physically pack any more bodies into the carriages and still shut the doors. There are fares for which there is no capacity limitation and full flexibility between trains, and SWR can continue to sell tickets at those fares regardless of how many people want to travel on any particular train. But on the day, you may only be able to buy walk-up fares, which are more expensive than some tickets bought in advance. So if you want to buy a ticket in advance, there's no need to be frustrated with SWR's inability to accept a US address. Just buy it from some other Train Operating Company - basically, all of them sell each other's tickets, and usually at exactly the same price. (I usually use LNER, for personal reasons, and it's been mentioned above - but there's no need to pick LNER if you prefer to use some other TOC.)

Do you mean book a private car transfer, or do you mean rent a car and drive yourself? I'm not sure where the reference to "car-hire locations" came from, or whether I've missed something said earlier in the thread. A private car transfer should take you straight to the terminal at the airport.

If you're going to be doing things in central London the day before, I would advise ignoring the fact that you have Heathrow Express tickets when you pick a hotel or a location for a hotel. Presumably you go them cheaply? If so, be prepared to just junk them. There are plenty of hotels in convenient locations (some of which have already been mentioned) from which you are better off taking a different route to Heathrow. There really aren't many good reasons to haul yourself out from central London to Paddington, only to change trains there to go to Heathrow.

I'm very sorry to hear that about your husband, and hope that he will recover soon and that you'll get to do a replacement cruise. As you've cancelled the air travel completely, I suspect that even EZ Air agents may not be able to tell you what would have happened because they won't have an actual reservation and tickets to look at. Those may have provided real information for the agents from which they could have given you concrete advice, but that information probably won't be available to them after the cancellation. At any rate, I'm sure we all hope that you'll never need to find out, even in the future.

Sadly just a case of both my experience and my information being out of date.

Sorry, exlondoner and I were continuing an earlier discussion in this thread, which was originally about day trips from London.

It'll take you 30-45 minutes to get from your hotel to St Pancras. You need to be at St Pancras at least 30 minutes before departure; Eurostar recommends 90 minutes. Then the train takes 2:15. It'll then take you 30-45 minutes to get to the first place in Paris that you want to see. When I was at school, that added up to 4-5 hours. It's broadly the same going back at the end of the day, except that Eurostar recommends that you arrive at St Pancras 90-120 minutes before departure. So that's another 4-5 hours. If you stay in London, you could use almost all of that time for sightseeing, instead of dealing with the vagaries of international train travel. Including 20 minutes x 2 of basically pitch black inside a boring tunnel. With no fish.

That's a pity. Thanks both for the update.

Lots of one-stop options from CLT, too - Google Maps says it's about a 3-hour drive to Charlotte. But then there are also quite a lot of flights from TRI to CLT, which is (as I understand it) quite a nice airport to connect at.

You are, however, overlooking the Sky Garden's absolute number one benefit: You can't see the Walkie Talkie from there.

Those of us who routinely travel from this part of town to/from Heathrow know that the Piccadilly Line is absolutely not "quite a bit longer travel time". No bus is required for getting to the OP's hotel. Nor does there need to be much of an issue when changing between Tube lines. And I suspect that Google Maps may not fully take into account frequency: from central Heathrow the HEX is only 4 tph, and I think that the EL is only about 6 tph. In contrast, the Tube is about 12 tph, so you're probably saving about 5 minutes already by choosing the Tube. For the OP's destination, my routing would have been Piccadilly Line to Barons Court, District Line to Westminster, Jubilee Line to Waterloo. It's a cross-platform change at Barons Court, and Westminster has both lifts and escalators for an easy change with short walks. The OP's route, which involved taking the Tube from Paddington to Waterloo, would have been best done with a (nearly) cross-platform change from the Bakerloo Line to the Jubilee Line at Baker Street. You could take the Bakerloo Line directly from Paddington to Waterloo, but the exit from the Bakerloo Line is not step-free, while the exit from the Jubilee Line onto Waterloo Road is both step-free and also much more conveniently located for the OP's hotel.

There are lots of options for this. Most countries that are situated between the USA and Greece will have an option. And why would you want to stay for a couple of nights before going on to Athens? Most people doing this would go straight on to their destination (ie Athens). It may cost more to stop over. And it doesn't sound like you already have a reason to stop anywhere in particular. Having said that, of course, it isn't difficult to find a good reason to stop in one of the many cities that you could connect in. But then it also isn't difficult to think of good reasons to have an extra couple of days in Athens. I'm not sure that's the case (any more). But EK (Emirates) does seem to have a year-round flight from Newark to Athens.

Yes, in theory. But I can't see any reason why EZ Air would do that; airlines have their own reasons for cancelling a true round-trip, but these don't apply to travel agents, which is what EZ Air is in this situation. So that's one of the reasons why you need to speak to them. This is pretty specialist stuff, and I reckon that only EZ Air will have the answers. I say "a true round-trip", because in a market in which everything is priced using one-way fares, many of the airlines' reasons really fall away even if both halves of the travel are with the same airline and written on the same ticket. But I suspect that many airlines' systems are not sophisticated enough to distinguish. Anyway, this isn't relevant if you are holding two one-way tickets on different airlines, as you are.

I reckon that EZ Air are the people you need to talk to. You don't say who at Princess you've already been talking to, but if they're not EZ Air, then there's a decent chance that they're just parroting some common lines that they remember about air travel without knowing any of the rules or policies either of EZ Air or of the airlines, and probably without knowing many of the relevant details about your tickets. If you're on two different airlines, then there's a good chance that you have two separate one-way tickets. If you have been given ticket numbers, then check those straight away. A ticket number is a 13-digit all-numeric number. The first three digits are a code for the airline that has issued the ticket. If each person has two ticket numbers, each starting with a different 3-digit code, then you've been issued separate one-way tickets for the two halves of your air travel. (Of course, obviously each person's ticket for each half of your travel should start with the same 3 digits as every other person's ticket for the same half.) In this situation, there's a better chance that neither airline knows what's been booked with the other airline, and wouldn't know whether or not you flew with the other airline. But you need to check with EZ Air about its policies, too. Although it sounds plausible that you'd forfeit the money paid for the flight(s) you're not going to take, it would be uncommon to have to pay an additional penalty. If you hear about a "100% cancellation fee", airlines usually use that to mean that they will keep 100% of what you've paid - ie you just don't get anything back. If you're able to cancel the first half of the air travel, then you may be entitled to get a refund of (genuine) taxes, fees and charges - the amounts that would be paid to airports or the TSA by the airline, but won't now be. But again, you should ask EZ Air about this. BTW, usually, the outbound flight refers to the first half of your travel - ie when you're flying out from your origin point. The inbound flight is when you're returning back in to your point of origin. It's worth avoiding jargon and industry terms unless you know what they mean. It didn't do any harm when I had to read your post several times to understand what your problem is, but you don't want to confuse the situation when you're talking to EZ Air. If you haven't spoken to EZ AIr yet, how do you know this? Personally, I wouldn't trust a general call centre agent at a cruise line to know anything much about air travel, just like I wouldn't expect an airline call centre agent to know anything about cruises.

I gave this a random try today when I was out shopping. There was indeed a forex-dispensing ATM exactly where the LINK map said there would be, and it was offering the stated currencies. However, I wasn't prepared to go far enough into the cash-requesting process to see whether it would tell me how much I would be charged and in what currency before actually completing the transaction. So as it was a Travelex machine, I will stick to my presumption of "rip-off rates".

On the morning of 25 July there was a signal failure at Stamford Brook. Disruption for unexpected reasons like this can (and does) happen on any line at any time. If anything, our collective impression is that the Elizabeth Line currently suffers more short notice disruption than the Piccadilly Line (but is still phenomenally popular).

This website no longer works, as Thalys has basically been taken over and no longer exists (as Cotswold Eagle says), except as a redirect to eurostar.com. As Eurostar is the operator, it would seem natural for anyone now making a booking to start there, on the operator's website. However, the Dutch national railways website and the French national railways website would also allow you to book.

Maybe they think it's like Amtrak? 🙂