So, this would be the place to arrive at before you fly out from Heathrow.

I got here using the Hoppa H4 bus (Hotel Heathrow Hoppa: a National Express bus service) that, for £8 return took me from Terminal 1 and delivered me to the hotel door.

Unfortunately, it took me about 30 minutes of searching to find the actual bus stop.  The instructions in the Hoppa pamphlet do make sense once you’ve found the stop, but having no prior knowledge of Heathrow Terminal layouts the pamphlet didn’t help.  Fortunately a helpful Underground Rail customer man pointed me in the right direction.  The short-tempered National Express customer service rep was less than so.

Feels Right.

You know how you can walk into a hotel lobby and think/feel ‘oh oh, mistake’… well this hotel felt the total opposite.

Friendly Mist.

All the customer service people – the reception, the woman who held a door open for me,  the man who served me at my table, the barman, all seem to have this incredibly genuine friendliness about them,

This isn’t your average ‘they were polite’ feeling.  They actually talk to you as if they respect/value you, like you, and would take you home and introduce you to the kids whilst mom baked you cookies kinda of friendly.

Feels right at home, it does.

Comfy.

The room has air conditioning & heating.

Great Britain is in the grip of a heatwave, so the 19° lowest setting feels very cool, and very welcome.

Windows are heavily sound-proofed (they work well).

Word is to ask for a corner room (I asked for a quite room) –  can hear a distant rumble of jets soaring into the sky, but as Heathrow is just a mile away the sound proofing is working well.

Foodie.

For some reason I had expected to walk down the road to the local pub for an evening meal.  So seeing that the Holiday Inn had a fully function restaurant left me wondering if this was new.

After my Hoppa debacle, I decided to eat here rather than venture out.

• 

  Baked Salmon

  Baked salmon with warm potato salad and greens. Very, very nice, right proportions, and a good choice of salad dressing.

• 

  Pinot Grigio

  A glass of cold pinot grigio.  Couldn’t be more welcome. Went very well with the salmon.

• 

  Fruit Salad

  Fruit salad. Oh, I wanted the deep chocolate puds or the sticky toffee pudding, but I’m going to have plenty of time for that during holiday. Today was about eating well in preparation for the flight.

And now to bed – with Radio 2 gentling jazzing, and the air conditioner on a cool breeze.