With our tour over, this morning once again we have a long wait for a flight to move on to our next destination - London. This time it was a 4.55pm departure from Milan's Linate Airport and luckily our noon checkout meant we could have a leisure brekky and then repack our cases and a 2 hour wait in the hotel foyer before heading to the airport!
For the first time on the trip so far we had to buy wifi service at a hotel - everywhere else the service has been very good and free - but not in Milan, with the hotel charging €2 per hour, but I managed to charm a free hour out of the receptionist which helped pass the time!
In the end we got sick of waiting and got a taxi to Linate and checked in our luggage at the Alitalia desk, then wandered the shops a bit - Mumsie bought a carry-on bag to hold her extra purchses and then we did the customs and security thing and waited for our flight to board!
The 2 hour flight passed quickly enough, with some pretty serious turbulence over France, but we arrived at Heathrow right on time and quickly got through all the checks, then caught a shuttle from Terminal 4 around to the Hertz depot at Terminal 5. Heathrow is so big that the trip took us 15 minutes!
We quickly got the paperwork for our car done - getting a mid sized Kia Ceed instead of the Skoda Octavia wagon we ordered, and after a few moments of panic when we saw the car was just a compact wagon, we got our 4 cases packed in quite easily!
The Kia has a built in GPS which was a bonus, as we were going to rely on our phones for guidance, so we entered our pre booked accommodation in the little town of Fleet - about 40 minutes away - and set off! Luckily, being a Saturday evening, there was very little traffic about and we soon made the Premier Inn Fleet, got our room and then headed to the attached restaurant for a well earned drink!
Well, here we are in England, a few days driving and then it will be back to London. Hopefully the weather gods will smile on us and we can do some good sightseeing!
The Europe part of our trip was great - even if the Italian Lakes tour was a bit poorly planned - and we will have great memories of the Dalmation Coast, Paris and the north of Italy!