We caught an underground train out to Heathrow Airport to begin our journey home. As one of the busiest airports in the world, it has four train terminals so we had to be careful to get off at the right stop.

Interestingly Bridie made the comment on the way there that the Piccadilly line, which we were travelling on, has a bend in it as it was built around a plague pit. I looked this up and sure enough there is a theory about it – the line curves distinctly between South Kensington and Hyde Park Corner stations as it is believed to have avoided a plague pit near Hyde Park. When you think about it literally it’s pretty gruesome, but Bridie’s comment made me realise how many layers of history must lie beneath the London of today – from prehistoric people to the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans, medieval people, the Georgians, the Victorians - and everyone in between. I would definitely like to come back and do some tours of London’s underground – I think this would be fascinating to explore (though maybe I’ll skip the plague pits…).

Although Heathrow serves over 83 million passengers every year, I was surprised to learn that its footprint is literally less than half the size of Melbourne Airport – 12.14km vs 27.4km square respectively. I guess they are in vastly different environments – London is dense and congested, whereas Tullamarine is more expansive.

We were impressed with how seamlessly we made it through check-in and customs, and had plenty of time to sit and wait in the terminal and savour our last little while in the UK before embarking on our three leg trip home. We stopped in Dubai again and this time Singapore as well, arriving in Melbourne Airport on Saturday morning to a very relieved Julian 

Don’t forget to check out our travel reflections, trip statistics, favourite photos and our travel map.