What to do with a 6 and a half hour layover at HEATHROW

[Spaced Cowboy]

BTW finding a smoking area in the Frankfurt Airport is not a problem.

[rah]

Well the tickets are booked so no Frankfurt this time.

[Ecthy]

You can't have Frankfurt sausages in Frankfurt, BTW. There they are called Vienna sausage, as they are in all sensible parts of Germany.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Huh dude, the Underground to downtown is like one hour, so I'd say forget it, unlike there's something you badly want to take a picture of. Find a chick and have a drink with her.

You wouldn't get the underground. You'd get the overland express to Paddington.

[Dauphin]

Rah, visit the location of the original The Office. Slough is very close to Heathrow. Its also got absolutely nothing to offer.

[MikeH]

The airport itself isn't really near anything. Everything around it is airport related for a long way in any direction.

From Heathrow you can get into central london on the tube, it takes 50-60 mins and the tubes run every five minutes or so. That'll cost £5 ish return I expect.

You can also get the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. That runs every 15 mins and takes 15/20 minutes depending which terminal you go from and then you'll be 10/15 mins from Central London on the tube. That'd be about £15 ish.

Taxi is not worth considering, would take ages and cost an absolute fortune.

So basically it'll take you approaching an hour each way travelling. If you are traveling light you could get into London for a couple of hours.

However:

It can often take a long time to get parked at Heathrow. So even if you land on time it can take 30 minutes to park the plane. I've been stuck on the ground waiting for a parking space for 45mins ish.

You are on non-EU passport and you could get stuck at immigration. Can be up to an hour if you are really unlucky.

So it's possible your layover will get cut down to 4.5 hours in which case you'd barely have enough time to get into London before you have to return.

If you do have some time you could get into London, take the tube to Westminster and see the houses of parliment etc, and walk up through all the pretty touristy bits of London.

The airport itself is pretty much like every airport in the world.

[Ecthy]

When I was in Reading, Mike warned me of Slough and the people there...

[rah]

Yes, immigration could be a concern. So, can you meet people for a drink without having to go back through?

[Kinjiru]

If you *really* want to see London, you can *accidently* drop your passport, which will, of course, take you quite some time to locate, even with airport security assisting you. And don't you know it, by the time you locate it, you will have just missed the boarding window for your Cairo flight.

Guess you'll have to take the next flight, even if it is tomorrow...

Your company really can't say much to you if such a situation happened...

Not that I have done such things...

too often...

[MikeH]

Originally posted by rah
Yes, immigration could be a concern. So, can you meet people for a drink without having to go back through?

You can't meet anyone for a drink without going through immigration into the public area of the airport. I am not sure if you have to go through immigration if you are connecting or not.

[Leifmk]

Duty free shopping. They've got a pretty good selection of single malt.

[rah]

Yeah Mike, that was my main concern, I figured I'd only be allowed to stay in areas for ticketed passangers without having to go through immigration again.

But it would be worth doing that if some of the locals showed up for a brew or two. Too bad it's a work day.

[Provost Harrison]

Hmmm, Heathrow? Well it's doable, just that it is the wrong side of London...if anyone else is up for it, it could be doable!

[rah]

I'm IN

[Japher]

I Like to STOP at the duty free shop... I'm just seeing Newman and Kramer going crazy for duty free stuff.