London Before Our Return Home

Don’t forget to read about all our UK and Norway adventures:

Southampton and P&O Britannia

Port of Call: Stavanger

Port of Call: Flam

Cancelled Port & Our Scenic Cruising Day

Port of Call: Haugesund

 

And just like that…all good things must come to an end.

 

We spent our final day of vacation in London where we met up with some of our favorite travel friends we met last year on our Ireland Cruise.  Nothing cements a friendship more than three cancelled ports and four total sea days stuck indoors on a ship.  I am forever grateful for the travel friends I met on that cruise and was elated to be able to see Denise and her husband Paul so soon.  Oh, how I wish we had less miles between us!

 

Denise and Paul as they are absolutely lovely, and I am so thankful they rode the train to meet us in London.   Since they are “locals” but have not done many “local” things in London,

I got to play tour guide and we rode the hop on hop off (HOHO) bus. 

 

If you are in a new city and don’t know what to do, check if they have a HOHO option as you just cannot beat it.  It allows you to ride through the whole city if you stay on for the entire loop and/or get off and see what looks of interest until you are ready to hop back on the next bus. 

 

Part of our adventures included pints at several pubs around London and getting lost looking for the Notting Hill Gate. 

We had the BEST time and wished so much we’d had more time together.

Cruising Ireland: Pre & Post Cruise - London

Our vacation started about 9.5 hours before our flight check in when British Airways cancelled our flight from Seattle to London.  I should have guessed this would be an omen of what was to come (more on that later).  I called the representative who is able to get us on a flight that left Seattle earlier and arrived in London earlier, but it would be on Virgin Atlantic instead of British Airways. We were still able to get business class which meant we weren’t out the money weed already spent.  This turned out to be a really good thing because we enjoyed Virgin Atlantic, and we would look at flying them again in the future.

The food was really good and the service was spectacular. We did not feel the same when we flew British Airways on the way home.  Also, I may be in love with business class.  I know I can’t get my hopes up of being able to fly it in the future, but it was definitely nice.  I don’t feel like I got any better sleep than I would’ve but it was just nice to be able to lay flat and lounge with more room to get comfortable. 

We used our extra time making a practice run to the Victoria coach station so we were better prepared for cruise day.  After, we made our way on the underground to Bridgit’s Bakery.  I loved afternoon tea.  We were starving so we wolfed our afternoon tea down in a matter of moments. I think our server was surprised.  In hindsight, I wish we’d sat and enjoyed it longer, but perhaps on another trip.

We walked around the Covenant Gardens theater district before arriving at Arts Theater for Choir of Man.  I purchased my token to be able to go on stage and get my beer not knowing the cast actually came out and joined those on stage as I had already returned my seat.  The show is just as good as I remember it from our Alaska cruise. Although there was one song that I didn’t recognize.

We stayed our first night in London at the Hub Premier Inn by Kings Cross. It’s a budget hotel, but had nice accommodations. The seven dollar breakfast buffet was delicious. We would definitely stay there again.  On our return, we stayed at the Staybridge near the airport and also really enjoyed that location.

We used the National Express Bus as our transfer to/from Southampton. The bus was delayed on embarkation day due to a traffic nightmare in the city of Southampton. After making our way on foot to the cruise port to drop our bags, we decided to forgo the Solent Sky Museum. It was definitely a bummer but a relief to be able to be on board the ship and relax.

I’ll fill you in on the all the cruise details and NCL Star in future posts.

Disembarkation was a breeze compared to cursing in the US and we caught the bus back to London, no surprise, we encountered delays. The traffic going into London was a mess.  We checked our bags at a left luggage location near Kings Cross and made our way to the Royal Air Force Museum.  Kenyon was like a kid in a candy store seeing all these planes we don’t get to see in U.S. museums.

Our time in London felt too short and we wished we had a couple extra days.  We will have to continue to tackle it all on another trip.

More to come…

Our Visit To Harry Potter Warner Bros Studios - UK

Harry Potter Warner Bros Studios was really neat.  We enjoyed our time seeing the costumes, sets, and movie magic come to life.

It ended up being a faster tour than we thought, but as usual, you would make the most of your time and draw it out as long as you wanted to.

One of the highlights was having Butterbeer Ice Cream.  We had already tired the Butterbeer on our trip to Universal Orlando so this time, we went for the ice cream.  It did not disappoint.

I really enjoyed walking through some of the movie sets.  It was so cool to think the famous actors had worn all the costume in front of us.

We made our own way back to London via train/bus transport and had a little time to pop into the British Museum.  It was crowded and HOT but at least we could say we went to at least one museum.  

We lucked out with a shared transfer to the airport, which we didn’t know was a roundtrip booking from when we landed in London.  It’s was a breeze getting to the airport and even faster getting through security.  Then, we had to wait around for our flight to Amsterdam.  Sadly, our smaller British Airways flight didn’t have the same excellent customer service as our long flight a few days earlier had been.

Amsterdam...here we come!

London Adventures

We are about to disembark from the Viking Hlin as we say goodbye to the many new travel friends we met along this Viking River Cruise.  We had a lot of fun and saw some amazing cities.  I can’t wait to fill you in on it all.

But, for now, I’ll back up to the start of our journey. 

Our days London were jammed packed and enjoyable.

We really liked British Airways and the upgrade to premium economy was totally worth it.  Regardless, it is hard to sleep on a plane.  We wished we could have upgraded to business class, although I’m not sure that would have been that much easier to sleep.  This is the biggest plane I’ve been on and it really looks big when it is along side a Southwest plane.

Once we landed and make our way to the Mercure Bloomsbury Hotel, we freshened up as best we could and went in search of food in hopes of keeping us awake just a bit longer.  I clean up pretty nicely for only sleeping 3 hours of the last 27 hours.

Our first full day in London was the Hop On/Off bus.  I am really glad we planned this because we were tired and we are still dealing with that tired jet-lag feeling.  We rode all four bus lines and at one point we got off the bus a few times to take photos up close (you can’t see Buckingham Palace from the bus).  Sadly, the Queen was out of town.  We also saw Westminster Abby and found out that the iconic Big Ben was actually under construction.  Not cool!

You can see the London Eye from many places and while I had hoped to ride it, there just wasn’t enough time for everything.

Our bus pass included a water cruise portion, which made getting photos easier.  London is such an off mix of old and new architecture.

We had some good meals in London including traditional fish & chips, poached egg on toast, and porridge.  We also stopped into this pub I’d been seeing all over town called Green King, one of which was outside The British Museum.  You always knew one was close when I saw the hanging flower pots.

The service industry is another story.  I don’t know if it is just London specific but food/drink service was terrible.  I had heard they don’t expect tips and maybe that is the difference.  Also, despite speaking “English” boy did I have trouble communicating with the British.  Apparently my meaning of things isn’t the same.  I keep reminding myself that the language barrier is only going to get worse as we continue towards Germany.  Wish me luck!

Day Two was spent at Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio. I’ll check back with that recap soon.