Thursday, May 14, 2015

Day 1 - Hello London!

Cor' blimey...she's alive!

OK...maybe that was a little stereotypical and I should be ashamed, but whatevs....I'm in London!   WTF, you guys are asking?  One minute you're talking about lifting weights and running (even though admittedly I haven't posted much on either topic lately), the next thing you post you're in London. Hubs and I are on vacation and we're doing a tour through Europe...this trip has been months and months in the planning, and last night we flew out of Vancouver and we landed in London this afternoon.  This is a pretty whirlwind trip where we're hitting a fair number of cities, so I decided that I would blog this trip...when I went back and re-read some of my Hong Kong posts (see here, here, here and here), I was like oh wow, I'd forgotten all about that!  So here I am, blogging from our hotel room.  I'm going to try and do this as much as I can (pending wifi availability) unless there are some nights where the pints may have been a bit too glorious to resist.  Teehee.  Oh...and you might notice the lack of photos.  I cannot for the life of me figure how to get pics off my iPad so I can post them to Blogger (I can feel my BFF cringing at my Luddite-like tendencies as she reads this) so for now, no pics.  Sorry dudes.

So where is this trip taking us?  London, Paris, Nice (including a side trip to Monte Carlo to watch some F1 qualifying), Florence, Venice and Rome.  We're doing an organized tour through Trafalgar because neither of us have been to Europe and we wanted to get a bit of a taste of what it's like.  We heard some good things about Trafalgar, so here we are.  

So...enough of that.  What did we do our first day here?  Well, before I start on today I would remiss in not discussing our flight here.  The last time Hubs and I did a long haul flight to Hong Kong, we seriously almost died.  We were in economy on Cathay and the seats were atrocious.  Atrocious.  We swore we would never do that again, so through some points magic we managed to accumulate enough tickets to fly business class on British Airways.  As part of this, we had access to the British Airways Club Lounge which was amazing.  There were tons of snacks, coffee and free liquor.  And I'm not talking about Crown Royal type stuff (not that I mind a good old Crown and ginger every so often) but 15 year old Glenlivet that you could pour as much as you liked.  Drool.  The piece de resistance though was the actual seats themselves...Hubs and I picked  two side by side pods so we could sit next to each other so Hubs could hold my champagne glass so I could gleefully take selfies of myself as I revelled in my luck and hummed strains of Fergie's Glamourous under my breath.  Kidding!  But the best thing was actually being able to lie down on a plane.  It was so awful on our Hong Kong trip...13 hours in seats that I'm sure is what it felt like to be put on the rack back in the olden days.  So amazing, and so worth it...it's definitely spoiled us for anything else going forward.

Once we got off the plane and through Central London to our hotel (um, holy traffic!), Hubs and I got freshened up and decided to walk to Harrod's.  It was pouring rain out, but we were game to get some fresh air and what's a little rain to us Victorians, amirite?!  We'd passed it on the way in, so we thought sure, we know the way!  Um, nope...we got lost and thankfully we found our way.  Now for those of you who have been to Harrod's...is it not the most freaking confusing store to be in?  We walked around and around in circles trying to find the tea room and finally I had to put on my best "help this tiny little Asian" face on and asked for help.  What is it with the no store directory?  And the weird rooms that link and go through other rooms?!   Anyways, we finally found the Tea Room and had the most amazing dinner.  We were too late for afternoon tea, so we had dinner there and ordered a nice pot of tea to share.  Seriously...the food was delish.  Hubs had a fresh pea soup with ham and devonshire cream along with a smoked haddock cake, and I had the traditional fish pie which was to die for.  I've never had a pea soup that was so fresh tasting, and the fish pie was full of smoky bits of fish, a very light sauce and the fluffiest mashed potatoes I've ever had.  First meal in London:  success.

Day one, done.  Tomorrow is Tower of London and the British Museum...and possibly a pint of something along the way home.  

1 comment:

Char said...

I'm so jealous. Hope your trip is amazing. And don't forget to post pics.