The various alarm clocks worked and we were down for breakfast at about 6.30am with our bags packed. We checked out and thanked the staff for a great time before wandering out into the early morning sunlight to wait for our cab. After a few nervous minutes, he appeared outside the hotel and drove us smoothly to the airport.
Checking in took some time but we were among the first for our flight in the Easy Jet queue which meant we got put in group A for boarding. Having off loaded our baggage we headed off through passport control, using a microchip scanner for the first time. It was very simple to use, you just lay your passport down on the reader with the photo showing, and then stepped into the booth where there were two green feet for you to stand on. Don't look down to check your feet are on the right place because the machine will take a picture of the top of your head and you then have to wait for it to try again...but once it has taken your picture it lets you through. We then wandered off to the waiting area for our flight.
We were late taking off as the previous flight didn't leave on time due to lots of late passengers, apparently there had been a problem with the passport control system after we went through and hundreds of people were having to dash down corridors to make their flights. Eventually, we were moved to another gate, luckily it was on the other side of the corridor from the one where we had been sat for the past 2 hours, but we did have to take a bus to the plane because of the problems with other flights not being able to leave on time.
The flight home was quiet and we had plenty of leg room in the front row of seats. The landing at Luton, to quote the steward sat opposite us, "was quick". He did seems a little wide eyed at the rapidity of our descent, but we were all alive and ready to go home.
After customs clearance and baggage collection, I rang up the parking company and the car was delivered to the airport for us. We loaded up and headed home in the glorious sunshine of an English summer's day...
Post script - just the 980 photos to download, weed out and process. the best ones are available on Flickr.com in my Lisbon Holiday 2009 set.
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