HALF TIME THOUGHTS, EPISODE 12: INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL, 2021 STYLE

I feel lazy choosing such an obvious topic but having drifted past several such points during the COVID era, I think it’s important to start memorializing them.

The trip I’ve just made had been postponed three times and came perilously close to a fourth, only for the UK to lift its quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated travelers entering from the US.

Whether that relaxation endures will depend on the US getting to grips with the Delta variant (or others that will surely follow) – a subject I’m not going to touch here.

I’m just grateful that a window of opportunity presented itself for us to visit family, friends, associates, and clients on this side of the pond.

What to Plan?

The first challenge we faced was psychological: what activities should we plan during our stay?

Even with some local knowledge, courtesy of family and other contacts in the UK, it was difficult to know how much freedom we would enjoy.

Would we need reservations to get into everything but the shops?

Might we be denied entry – or at least raise suspicion – if our itinerary included multiple stops rather than just the family home and perhaps a hotel in London?

How much time should we dedicate to family?

Like too many others, I lost a family member (my father, to cancer) in the middle of 2020, when traveling to visit him during his final days was simply impossible.

I obviously wanted to spend ample time with my mum, tidying up emotional loose ends and closing that painful chapter, but she didn’t want that to be the overarching story of our trip.?She wanted us to do ‘normal’ things like seeing other people and having fun.

We struck a balance between a few days touring, the better part of a week with mum, and a few days in London mixing business and pleasure.

Apart from booking a rental car and refundable hotels, we left the rest to chance – at least, until we were on the ground and better able to make plans.

The Documents

United Airlines did a half-decent job preparing us to cross the border.?Their travel readiness website directed us to UK resources explaining the requirements and how to go about meeting them.

From that point forward it was like walking through patchy fog.

Occasionally, we would experience a moment of clarity and a piece of the puzzle would click into place, only to plunge back into the murk, trapped in recursive loops of web pages and incomplete explanations.

As it turns out, you need four things in addition to a ticket and your passport to board the flight and be allowed into England:

• Proof of vaccination (although it sounded like there might be a way of getting in with some sort of medical exemption)
• A negative PCR or antigen COVID test, taken within 72 hours prior to the flight
• A pre-booked appointment to take a PCR or antigen test within 48 hours of arriving in England
• A completed Passenger Locator Form

At Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), proof of vaccination meant showing the mostly-hand-written CDC cards that we received along with our vaccinations from the Harris County Health System.

I’ll come back to the subject of vaccination proof in a moment.

We arranged for at-home PCR tests , administered by a healthcare professional that returned results via email within 24 hours – an approach we can highly recommend.

How and where to pre-book tests in England was a bigger mystery – one of those foggier patches.?

Fully vaccinated travelers entering from an Amber country are required to pre-book a test for Day 2 after their arrival (other categories of passenger might also require a test on Day 8).

At first, we thought we could have at-home test kits delivered to our planned accommodation, but no dice.?They can only be sent to an address where the person to be tested is a resident.

Next, we checked for COVID testing locations close to where we would be staying.?There were quite a few, most operated by the UK National Health Service, but none took appointments.?Promising to take a walk-in test wouldn’t meet the requirement to prove we had something booked.

Eventually, we tracked down an on-site testing service in our first point of call and made appointments to the tune of ￡100 each.

Finally, we tackled the Passenger Locator Form.?It’s nicely organized on the UK government website but takes patience.?

It demands details of where you will be staying and with whom on each of the first ten nights of your visit.?Since we were planning a few hotel stops before settling in at my mum’s, that led to several rounds of post code lookups and address confirmations.

In a fit of middle-aged pique, I decided to make paper copies of everything.?Sometimes, middle-aged intuition pays dividends.

The Airport

We had taken a domestic flight in July, so the airport experience was somewhat familiar.?Masks (with generally good compliance) and distancing (not so much) from stepping onto the car park shuttle in Houston to stepping off the rental car shuttle in London.

Our COVID paperwork didn’t come into play until we reached the gate for boarding.

The gate agent made a lengthy announcement that his mask and the general hubbub rendered ninety-percent unintelligible.

Guessing what was probably required, we made a bee line for the gate agent’s desk.?Others pushed forward to board and were disappointed to discover they needed to be in the lengthening queue behind us.?Small victories!

This was where the paper copies came in handy.?The gate agent requested and read each one, something that would have been harder if we’d tried to show them on a phone screen.

The Plane

We flew up front, which I realize afforded us a much nicer experience than in the back.?That said, many of the inconveniences apply to both.

Wearing a mask for ten hours straight – minus a couple of meal and bathroom breaks – isn’t fun, but it’s not nearly as bad as I expected.

I carried a couple of mask options but ended up wearing the same, slightly looser fitting cloth option for the whole journey.?It’s the loops around your ears that become bothersome more than the mask itself.

The food was nicely done, despite more wrappings and plasticware than would previously have been involved.

It sounds like a little thing, but the wine was served from bottles instead of being handed out in splits.?Even the stewardesses remarked on how much that felt like a step toward normality.

The Other Airport

Heathrow had made the news a lot during July and early August.

Staff shortages, with up to a quarter of them self-isolating because of a positive COVID test or contact tracing, meant they could barely keep things moving.?Queues (of an un-British variety) stretched around terminals and led to outcry in parliament.

Steeled for a long wait, we joined the flux of inbound passengers heading into the Queen’s Terminal. We strode past imposing warning signs directing anyone from a Red country to Terminal 4 for special processing (a.k.a. the bus to your pre-booked stay in quarantine).

In a Disneyesque arrangement, we trudged in murmuring single file through a maze of people-herding barriers.?First to one end of the terminal, then back to where we started, and finally into the immigration hall.

Another dozen or so switchbacks and we reached the electronic immigration gates.?

It all took less than an hour.

Hopefully, you too can use the e-gates.?Those who cannot – either because their passport isn’t compatible or because they’re traveling with kids – faced a very different prospect.?Their queue barely moved as each traveler or family waited for an immigration official to become free.?I bet they were there for a few hours.

Like water downstream of a weir, everything beyond immigration flowed swiftly.

Our luggage had long since been unloaded and was neatly arranged beside the carousel on which it had presumably made a few laps.

The arrivals hall was sparsely populated, with a scattering of limo drivers and tour agents lining the barriers and almost no family members.

The Onward Journey

I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow account of the ensuing days, but here are a few things that caught our attention.

People in England are embracing the relaxation of COVID rules, going back to shops and restaurants, and frequently not wearing a mask (even in places where its use is recommended).

There are limitations on how many people can enter certain spaces – a sensible approach when shops and restaurants are tiny compared to their American counterparts – including controlling grocery store entrances with traffic lights and only allowing in one member from each family.

We heard a similar range of opinions, from disparaging government policies to embracing a community-centric approach, to those we might encounter in Houston, except without the political rancor and violent overtones.

In general, though, we saw a high level of voluntary compliance.?This is England, after all.?People are willing to do what’s best for society without viewing it as an infringement on some personal ‘freedom’.

The most complex issue we encountered relates to taking in a West End show – something we’ve tried to do each time we pass through London.

Entering the auditorium requires proof of vaccination status using a phone app – either the one provided by the NHS or an “international equivalent”.

That’s a challenge when you live in a red state that prohibits such things.

After a lengthy online search, we discovered the VaxYes vaccination verification service by GoGetDoc .?It’s quick, easy to follow, and delivers a phone-based certificate – complete with QR code – that’s now sitting in my Apple Wallet.

Our theatre treat lies in store before we fly home next week, so I’ll need to update this post when we see how it plays out.?

Then we’ll reverse the process, take a pre-flight COVID test (another ￡150 each, thank you London pricing), put our long-haul masks back on, and see whether immigration into the USA goes as smoothly as it did when coming this way.

Parting Thoughts

Travel isn’t the same as it was pre-2020.?There’s more hassle, less comfort, and a whole raft of extra steps – many of which add considerably to the cost.

The websites are complex, designed for a multitude of scenarios which ends up making them difficult to navigate, even for travel-savvy people.

But it’s still worth it.?

The inconveniences are as much a function of how spoiled we had become by easy long-haul travel as of the challenges presented by a persistent global pandemic.

In the air, time passes as quickly or slowly as it ever did.?Wearing a mask through it all isn’t nearly as bad as you might expect.

On the ground, it’s a mixed bag.?People are confused, jaded, frustrated, but making the best of what they can do – of what they understand.

Most importantly, human connection can be reestablished.

That alone is worth the preparation and sixteen hours (each way) of slightly-less-comfortable-than-before waiting, shuffling, and more waiting.

Photo by Kevin Hackert on Unsplash