London Calling (Part One)

Just returned from a few days in London. It's a fantastic city, and layovers there are the thing I miss about not flying long-haul flights anymore. I took my sister with me. This was her first trip to the U.K. so she was very excited. Our flight over was uneventful. We were able to get First Class seats on the outbound. My airline offers a great product in First. You have your own kind of pod, and you can convert your seat into a fully flat bed. My friend Sandy was working in the cabin on our flight over. The whole crew was great and our trip over the pond was uneventful.

We decided on the way over that we would hit the ground running after we arrived. We did not want to lose the first day sleeping. We landed in London, passed thru HMS Customs and Immigration and took the train to Victoria Station in central London. We took the standard little black London cab to our hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Kensington, near Holland Park.

Thankfully they had a room available for us when we checked in at noon. I was afraid that we would have to wait until the 3pm check-in time. After we showered up, we hit the tube and went to the Tower of London. It was the one thing I had never done on previous trips. We spent a few hours walking around the area. We got to see the Crown Jewels and the various towers were notable folks were held until they were usually hung, drawn, and quartered. The most notable "apartment" was the one used by Sir Walter Raleigh.

There were these huge pigeons everywhere and they would fly off right in front of you, right in your face. It made my sister scream a few times.


Around sunset, we took the tube back to our hotel. Dinner was included the first night, so we had supper and then headed out to the Apollo Victoria Theatre to see the musical Wicked. It's based on a book, kind of the story behind the Wicked Witch of the West and how she became so "Wicked". The singers/performers were great and it was a fantastic show.

We headed back to the hotel around 11pm, at which point we were walking zombies. We had been awake for what seemed like forever. However, as soon we were arrived back at the hotel, we got a second wind and stopped in the hotel bar for a pint. After we got back up to the room, we took Ambien and went right to sleep.