Third and final morning in London. I bought breakfast from the same lovely place as the previous days and spoke for a couple of minutes with, what I assume were, the owners. We packed our stuff and then left the apartment at 10 to get to The Formula 1 Exhibition, the final item on our agenda.
Like most of the places we had been to in London, it took about 45 minutes to get there. They had lockers which we had verified were big enough for our luggage so after putting them into storage we entered the exhibition. Martin and Håkan had booked a run in the simulator, Fastest lap and they got encouraged to begin with that since they expected more people later on and currently, there was no line.
So they jumped into their respective seats and took off. Once or twice (perhaps more…) the sign “Invalidated lap time – left the track” was shown. But they did great, a flaw in the programming made the result shown for just a couple of seconds so we are not quite sure who was the fastest. Everyone is a winner! 🙂
We continued into the exhibition itself and watched items, pictures, and videos from the history of Formula 1. How the format, money, interest, and not the least, technology have evolved over time. It’s quite impressive how a Formula 1 car works and how many different components combined can allow such great speeds and so much control. And at the same time keep the drives safe.
There was one segment talking about the accident where Romain Grosjean crashed in Bahrain 2020. A small miracle, helped with technological safety features made it possible for Roman to survive.
It ended with a video sequence called The Pit Wall, which was quite immersive. I finished first, closely followed by Håkan while Martin took some more time going through everything. He is probably the one most invested in F1 of us. After the mandatory tour through the shop filled with merch to high prices, we stepped out just to see an airplane leaving the London City Airport, climbing the sky just above us.
We looked for a place for some lunch but this seemed to be a bit off in regards to restaurants and the Excel Center itself was closed to the public. We ended up just boarding the Elisabeth line towards Heathrow and finding some food there instead. An hour later we stepped off at the airport. Security took a while. We all got into separate lanes and Martin got two of his devices scrubbed for drugs while in my lane there were a couple with two small children, and an old lady in a wheelchair, both taking up some resources to get through.
Anyhow, we got into the terminal and started to look for some food. Landed at London’s pride. First, we were told the burgers were out, but while ordering they suddenly found some more so they were back on the menu. So we ordered burgers and a couple of toasts along with drinks. They forgot the bacon on Håkans burger and the food was just about okay. Well, what can you expect at an airport?
Some final shopping, gifts, and sweets for the family at home, and then just waiting to board the flight home. Flight started boarding at 17:35, departed at 18:25 and landed at 20:15/21:15. Just a car ride home.
Thanks for a wonderful weekend guys, let’s do this again!
