Globaliser

You would expect that a church that's a cathedral in all but the technical sense would have regular services. Service times and details available on the Abbey's website: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/worship-music/services-times https://www.westminster-abbey.org/worship-music/services-times/choral-services

No issues in this respect, as the OP's planning a sub-24 hour connection.

Yes, and it's one of the (other) usual suspects that has never let me down.* And you can easily find negative reviews/reports about that one along the same lines as those you've read. And that is why I don't repeatedly push its name here. If you really are that concerned, then another option is just to go to the official taxi rank when you get to Heathrow and jump in a black cab. If you want a cheaper option, there is inevitably going to be an element of Forrest's box of chocolates. * One possible exception, depending on your definition, is the time when my usual company was fully booked. So it gave me the number of one of the companies in your list, who could take my booking. And that company did the job just as well as the one I usually use.

To be fair, it is streets ahead of what normally passes for domestic "first class" within the US.

On this occasion, I think that I can say "I told you so" without sounding snarky. Glad that this has been sorted out, although you may want to check the precise times of your new flights.

I'm not on these long-distance trains very often, but AIUI that's the purpose of being able to make a seat reservation almost until the train departs. Seat reservations are free, so if you can make another one on a train that's operating, then that solves the problem. Even if you can't, there are very often some unreserved seats on every train, and the onboard staff will help you to find a seat. In any event, there are very often many seat reservations that are made but aren't used. So if you see a seat reserved from London to Edinburgh and there's nobody sitting in it when the train moves off from London, it's likely that the person with the reservation isn't going to use it.

I was exploring unfamiliar bits of the LNER site because of last Saturday's strike, which meant I had to take a different train, and noticed that if you have a ticket but still need a seat reservation, you can make these online up to 5 minutes before the train departs. I noticed the reservation details for a nearby seat did update during my journey, so clearly the live system can work. I don't know what the other companies' systems/policies are.

I suppose that if you booked this through the cruise line, you probably had no choice. So you will simply have to make the best of a bad job here. The first thing is that you will have to expect your current booking to get cancelled and modified. The flights that match what you describe are AF333 (1725-0605+1) connecting to AF1148 (0710-0900). On the assumption that this is for an August departure (you're on a cruise sailing from Barcelona on 21 August?), it sounds like you're flying on 18 August to arrive on 19 August. The official Minimum Connection Time during August is 80 minutes, so your connection is illegal. The MCT reverts to 60 minutes from 1 September, so I suspect that your 65-minute connection was booked before the change. At MCT, most passengers will make it to their next flight, but a significant percentage won't. The airline is playing a numbers game when it sets an MCT, and it's already signalled that it expects August to be horrible. In any case, that gives you some perspective on whether you "could" make the transfer in time. It's just like you "could" win the lottery - so even if you're allowed to board your currently-booked flights, you have to expect a good chance that you will miss your onward flight. Trying to charm airline staff for support isn't a dependable strategy. It can work, but don't rely on it. Remember that to airline staff, you are just another number out of tens of thousands that day, many of whom are in exactly the same boat that you are, including if you miss your connection. If it happens, you'll just have to deal with it. You're streets ahead of many others in your personal planning by finding out about the airport's layout. And now you can make sure you know what alternative Paris-Barcelona flights you might get put on.

"Who's", I think. Don't blame me if people later start applying for the wrong thing because they don't understand whether or not they need a visa and what sort of authorisation they need to travel, or if they apply through commercial websites that have been wrongly cited here as official websites, or if they fall for confusion deliberately provoked by those websites about what they do and do not need, or if they therefore think that the official website doesn't give them what they need, or if they then get ripped off as a result. Given the misuse of language by those proto-ripoff sites, and given the long history of similar things happening with electronic authorisations to travel to Australia and the USA, you can see all of this coming already.

I'm blushing now! It's lovely of you to say so - thank you. 😗 Not that I have been flying very much for the last couple of years. I'm trying not to get frustrated by the frequent sense that around here, it's too often a case of the blind leading the blind.

Number one piece of advice, seeing as you are intending to return: don't try to "see as much as possible in this short time". All that is likely to happen is that you will do some drive-by (photo)shooting and actually see, learn and experience nothing. Given your ages, you're probably best off getting the train from Southampton to Waterloo, dropping your stuff at a nearby hotel, and going off to do two or three things properly during the remainder of the day. That plan would be subject to the trains running that day, but (presuming that you mean Sunday 4 June 2023), it's going to be a while before we know whether engineering works might disrupt that bit of the plan.

The mainline railway station is to the north of Terminal 1, which is why you have to transfer from T2 to T1. The airport website says that the shuttle bus is the most convenient way to get from T2 to the railway station, which I suspect is probably because the drop-off at T1 is on the north side of the terminal. The shuttle train runs into the main part of T1 and (IIRC) is elevated, so that using that involves going up, taking the shuttle, going down, and then walking a (slightly) longer distance to the station. But from a very distant memory of using T2, my guess is that the shuttle would run more frequently than the bus (which the airport says is every 10-15 minutes). Although I haven't done this specific transfer from T2, the walk from the main part of T1 to the railway station is about ¼ mile and with luggage would probably be more than 5 minutes' walk. 30 minutes overall to transfer from T2 (exit from customs) to the railway station would sound about right. I wouldn't try to walk it, myself, especially with luggage. It would be almost a mile. But Frankfurt is a reasonably good place for an inter-modal transfer like this. A couple of years ago, I flew from London to Frankfurt, stayed overnight at an airport hotel and then went on to Munich by train the next morning. The Frankfurt bit was dead easy; and for what I was doing, it was a much better and much more pleasant solution than flying to Munich either in one flight or two. If you don't read German already, one thing that might be worth brushing up on is what the signs will say above each seat on the train to indicate whether it's been reserved or is available to you to use, if you're travelling on flexible tickets and don't have a reservation on a specific train. I can't remember, but I have a suspicion that they may only be in German - perhaps something like "reserviert" and "frei".

This is incorrect. We Brits did need a visa to go to the US until the introduction of its Visa Waiver Program. I have a good number of B-2 (tourist) visas in my old passports, and I have filled out my fair share of white I-94s over the years. When the VWP was introduced in July 1988, the need to get a B-2 (or other) visa for the US ceased, and the green I-94W was introduced.

If you want to unfollow a specific thread, then: Open the thread. Immediately below the thread title (which is at present immediately below the red "Please read: COVID-related Discussion" banner), there is the name of the thread starter. To the right of that, there is a blue box with a tick and the word "Following". Click the word "Following". A drop-down will open. At the bottom of the drop-down, on the left, there is the word "Unfollow". Click that. If you want to keep following the thread but you don't want notifications, then: Open the drop-down as above. Click the radio button next to "Do not send me any notifications". Click "Update preferences" at the bottom of the box. If you want to do something about notifications from all the threads you have followed, then: Click on your name near the top on the right (the place that shof515 has mentioned). Click on "Account settings". Then on the right hand side of the page, in the box headed "Other Settings", click "Notification Settings". There are lots of options available on the next page.

I don't know whether this helps to reassure those who've posted on this thread and who are about to travel, but the mood music suggests an expectation that if there is any recurrence, it's more likely to be at weekends than midweek.

Newer/more "advanced" is not always better. Give me the steam-age technology of the 777's window blinds any time. You can't completely darken the windows on a 787. This is the reason why some airlines operating them carry window blanks in the cabin, so that pax can ask for them to shut out the light completely. In addition, the 777 was built like the proverbial brick [outhouse]. That has actually been tested in real-life conditions, although mercifully only a handful of times.

'Twas not I who chose to disagree with Cotswold Eagle's accurate post. 😉

This is (I think) technically correct for the USA, which has a system that requires visas for (just about) everyone and then waives that requirement in certain circumstances. So even under the old scheme of paper I-94s, the green one that British citizens (and many others) filled in was an I-94W, with the W standing for waiver. The description "visa waiver" is incorrect for the travel authorisation schemes that both the EU and the UK are considering, for exactly the reason given by Cotswold Eagle: if you don't need a visa at all, there is nothing to waive. And they are certainly not "visas". The EU itself describes the function of the ETIAS scheme as to "carry out pre-travel screening for security and migration risks of visa-exempt visitors". It also says "Non-EU nationals who do not need a visa to travel to the Schengen area will have to apply for a travel authorisation through the ETIAS system prior to their trip." There is nothing here that suggests that these authorisations "visa waivers". The UK does not require a visa of US citizens coming for short tourist visits either, so any similar authorisation scheme would similarly not be a visa waiver. These are commercial websites and do not speak for the EU. The language that they use to describe the scheme can't be taken to be an official EU position. The first says "Disclaimer: This website does not belong to, nor is it affiliated with, the EU. We aim to inform travelers about ETIAS and visiting Europe. The official website of the EU is europa.eu." The second says "This website does not belong to, nor is it affiliated with, the EU. The official website of the European Union is europa.eu." These websites will no doubt be turned in due course into portals that will charge you an arm and a leg for doing nothing other than passing on your application to the official website that charges only a small fee.

"Loyalty points" have a monetary value. It can be difficult to define, and the same point may have different values for different purposes. But they have a value, and that value is limited. There is no reason to pay more for a loyalty point than it is worth. And that's important to remember if a lower price is part of the reason for picking a cruise line air fare.

The words "US Resident" in your thread title rang some alarm bells. Where you live is less important than what your nationality is. Make sure you first check the visa requirements for your nationality.

I know, and it's never precise at any time of the day. There will always be this kind of risk at whatever time of the day. But the car service I usually use (on the few occasions when I need to) basically builds in a 45-minute margin anyway, so that's going to soak up much of the uncertainty. Yes, a bit if you don't end up sitting in heavy traffic with the meter ticking over. But you may be being charged at a higher rate because of the time of day. I can't remember off the top of my head what the time bands are at the moment, but I think that these should be available from the TfL website. Anyway, the price differential is quite significant, so I doubt lighter traffic would result in a major change in the relative costs.

Not necessarily.... Delta changed my flight for my spring cruise bundle. I was originally round trip MIA, but since I could change the flight because of THEIR changes, I was able to fly into MIA and out of FLL. This is because Delta's fare rules regard MIA and FLL as the same place.

No, a car service driver will almost always meet you inside the terminal, usually with a sign with your name on. But the driver will first have had to park in the short-term car park and walk over to the terminal, and then you will all have to walk back to the car park, where the driver will have to pay for the parking before you go to the car and load up, and only then drive off. Depending on where he's managed to put the car, this can take quite a few minutes.

The meeting time issue isn't a big deal, because all the usual car services are well used to the fact that it takes time for passengers to emerge. They're doing it all the time, so they will have a pretty decent overview of the state of play, week by week. If anything, at a late hour there'll be less of a difference in journey duration because the traffic is lighter and the black cab's time advantages are reduced. As for the rest, it's really all the same as in the middle of the day.

In general, this is a misunderstanding - there usually isn't any such guarantee. I think that "cheap" is typically the chief attraction. In Europe, making the booking into a package also has consumer protection benefits.