May 1, 2023 - Day 1 - Flight from Seattle to London, Bus from Heathrow to Gatwick, flight to Biarritz, France, stay at Hotel Palmito.

Yesterday, we drove to PDX to pick up our awesome Camino hiking partner, Becky. We misjudged her arrival time and we were passing through Woodland when she touched down, coming from Phoenix via LA. The drive down and back was uneventful. We shared gear and trip ideas, had soup for dinner and called it a night about 10:00pm. 
In the morning, I had a few things to get done around the place, locking up and putting things away. 
Bill and Pat arrived as planned at 9:00 am sharp. We loaded into their beast and we were on our way to Sea-Tac for our 1:35pm flight to London. TSA was a breeze, then off to South Gates. There we found our flight was delayed until 2:11pm. We ate the lunch we packed, chicken breast sandwiches, apple slices, cheese and carrot sticks. 
Our flight attendants were great. You could tell they enjoyed working together and with the passengers. Becky made friends with Kevin. 
We squiggled a bit on landing in London, made our way through customs, then headed to the bus station for our ride to Gatwick. We found a ticket vending machine and were a bit startled at the price, 81£ ($103) for the 3 of us for a one hour bus ride. We had about ten minutes to find our bus stop and asked a airport worker who pointed us to the correct spot, station 11. When the bus pulled up we asked the driver if his was the correct bus. He looked at our receipt and audibly gasped at the price we had paid. He said it would have been cheaper to take a taxi. 
The ride was through heavy traffic. At Gatwick we used the restroom then went thru TSA and found a few chairs on the balcony where we could spend the next 4 hours watching the crowds of people come through and snoozing. 
Our EastJet flight said they would post what gate we were at come 3:05 and our tickets said the gate would close at 3:15. We staged ourselves in front of the big screen located at the entrance to the gates at 3:03, ready to sprint down which ever gateway our plane was waiting. At 3:05:23 they posted gate 14 and we scurried away. When we arrived just a few minutes later they we checking passports for boarding. Once past the check-in we sat for 20 minutes waiting to be allowed to walk on the plane. We were in row 2, right up in front of the plane. We watched the flight crew do their thing. 
Climbing to cruising altitude the engines made a terrible racket, but the flight crew showed no notice so I ignored it. Once up, the engines were throttled back and the noise ceased. 
Sally got up to us the toilet and found that someone had been sick in there and had left a mess. She reported it to the crew. They told her a women on the flight was very ill. We immediately put our masks on for the remained of the flight and opened and pointed the air vents directly at us. _Please!!! We don’t want to get sick. 
Once in the ground in Biarritz, France we took a taxi to our hotel. By now we were really dragging. It was 7:00pm, or 10:00am back home. We had been up for 28 hours, traveling for 25 of them. We took a short rest, then headed out to explore this seaside town on the Bay of Biscay, just a few miles north of the Spanish border. We checked out the water front just as the sun was setting. It is beautiful, reminiscent of the Portugal coast yet not as high of cliffs. It was stunning. Sally and I ate the last of our sandwiches from home and Becky had Spanish food right across the narrow street (pedestrian only) from our hotel. We were in bed by about 10:00. Tired as we were, sleep came hard as it was 1:00 in the afternoon “body time”, but sleep we did. Tomorrow we explore the city and run errands.