After the excitement of the football game came the big letdown of spending approximately 9-10 hours in the airport. Looking back on it, I'm glad I did it because it did save me quite a bit of money and the struggle of getting from a hotel to the airport at 4 in the morning. My flight left the London Luton airport at 6:00 am, it was the very first flight of the morning. I decided that I would just take my time getting from Wembley to the airport and hang out there.
Notice I didn't title this post "Sleeping in an Airport" because if I would have, I would be lying. There really wasn't much sleep that happened, just multiple power naps. But, I do have some advice that may or may not be helpful to you if you ever have to do the same.
1. Wear or pack lots of layers of clothing. It gets REALLY cold at like 2:00 in the morning. Especially wear warm pants and socks. At one point I was pretty sure my toes were frozen and I had on one layer of pants and they were leggings, not the warmest. At least pack your fleece-lined leggings. :)
2. If possible, find a coffeeshop with the comfier chairs. Buy something from them and keep the cup next to you, even if you drank all the coffee. If you happen to fall asleep they just think you're really tired or a really slow coffee drinker. I sat in the chairs at Starbucks for a really long time. Every once in a while someone would come around and kick people out if they hadn't bought anything.
3. Make "friends" with other airport people. A group of students and I kind of made a little hangout area. We could go to the bathroom and others would watch over our stuff. I always keep my important documents (passport, boarding pass, ID's and such) in my front coat pocket in a little wallet. So, I was pretty laid back with my bookbag. If someone wanted to rifle through it and steal my dirty socks that had been in there for a week, go for it. At this point, my attitude was : just get me back to Geneva.
4. Do research on the airport you plan on staying in. There's actually a whole website called "Sleeping in Airports". It's really interesting and gives lots of good information about where to sleep and the stores that are open 24 hours. This website is how I discovered that London Luton actually placed in the top 10 worst airports in Europe to sleep in. I kind of knew what to expect, and that was not much at all.
5. Bring headphones or earplugs and an eye mask. It was loud and it was bright in there. No further explanation needed.
6. Don't expect too much. It's an airport not a hotel. Don't be surprised if the airport staff or shop workers are rude to you.
I'm happy to say I can check this off my bucket list (even though it was never a goal of mine). Staying overnight at an airport can definitely have it's advantages, but it's not always fun. I am glad I did it, because being the first flight of the morning, they called us to security around 4:00 am. I got through security easily and got to the departure gate first and had to deal with a lot less people that way.
Best of luck on all of your future travel experiences.