My husband and I have an overnight at LHR coming up in May and need a plan. It's our last night of our anniversary trip. Arriving Heathrow at 9PM from Italy on a Sunday and departing the next afternoon at 3PM for Denver. Flights are on British Airways. We arrive in T5 and depart T3. We don't mind staying up late/waking early to make some kind of side trip worth our while.
Some questions:
1. Will we be able to check bags through from Milan to Denver and just c/o a small overnight bag?
2. I assume we'll have to go through passport control/customs no matter what. How long will that likely take?
3. Where should we stay? What should we do? I'm thinking we won't have enough time to make going into central London worth our time. We arrive at 9 PM, so by the time we exit passport/customs it'll probably be impossible to find a place still serving dinner, right?
4. How about the option of taking the express to Paddington, getting a hotel there, and exploring the town on foot the next morning for several hours, before taking the express back to LHR?
5. Is there another town/village/sightseeing site nearby that would make good sense given our time constraints? We'd like to go into central London, but are concerned about transportation eating up our limited sight-seeing time allotment.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
1) Checking bags. This depends on whether this is one ticket or two separate bookings. Ask the airline.
2) Passport control and customs - Passport control up to one hour worst case. Customs, unless you are very unlucky and get stopped, as long as it takes you to walk 100 metres through the "nothing to declare" door.
I would suggest finding a hotel in Windsor. It is close enough you could get a taxi from the airport without it costing too much..
You then have until midday to explore Windsor. Leave by taxi at midday (most hotels will allow you to leave your bags at reception), at airport ~12:30 well in time, over 2 hours before departure.
Posted by
27 posts
My daughter did something similar last year. Rather than spend the money on a hotel room i think in T5 they have pods that you can get some sleep in. There is also a hotel in one of the Terminals. I would take the express into town early (depending on what day of the week) most shops will be open early enough. Getting through customs will take about an hour, again depending on the time of day. Figure you have to be at the airport by 1p for your 3p flight. The pods are like 50 GBP vs 100GBP for a hotel.