Aldo and Maria Marcangelo chose a different way to celebrate their anniversary
When Aldo and Maria Marcangelo married 62 years ago, Beatlemania was at its height, and Concorde had yet to take flight. Now aged 88 and 84, the couple decided to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary with a trip around Italy.
The couple are among the 13,000 who travel on Heathrow Express every day and are sharing their story as part of One Seat, Thousands of Stories, a new film celebrating the people who make those journeys. Maria said: “Until you actually sit down with your suitcase beside you, you’re still at home in your head. I’m thinking ‘Have I packed everything? Have we got the passports? Has Aldo remembered his glasses?’
“Then the door closes, the train starts moving and suddenly you think: ‘We’re off!’. People hear 84 and 88 and think we should be sitting in armchairs. Absolutely not. If I can get on a plane, I’m going.”
Aldo said: “When you get to our age, you stop saying ‘we’ll do that one day’. One day is now. If there’s somewhere we want to see, we go.”
Another traveller, Izzie Rabin, describes how the time she spent on Heathrow Express felt like the biggest part of her journey home after a year studying abroad in Nova Scotia, Canada. For author Yvonne Garber, the journey marks the beginning of a milestone adventure, as she swaps a traditional 60th birthday party for a family trip to Bali.
“I got to 60 and thought, I don’t really want another handbag or a room full of balloons. I want everyone I love in the same place, doing something we’ll actually remember,” she said. And for Laura Lythall and Siobhan Proudfoot, taking their seats marks the moment months of planning finally turn into a holiday.
Laura said: “You can spend weeks talking about a trip, making lists and sorting everything out, but it doesn’t properly start until you’re actually on your way. Once you sit down with the bags and the train pulls away, you can finally switch off.”
There are around 4.5million journeys made on Heathrow Express every year. Juliana Demi, PR and Media Manager at Heathrow Express, said: “Thousands of people sit in our seats every day, but no two journeys mean quite the same thing.
“We might only be 15 minutes of someone’s journey, but those minutes can mark the start of an adventure, the final stretch home or part of a milestone they’ll remember for years. That’s what One Seat, Thousands of Stories celebrates – the people and stories behind an everyday journey.”
