It’s been a long day, we both woke at around 4:30am this morning. A busy day before our 9:50pm flight. But at least with the early start we had plenty of time to get through Deb’s list. ?
Apartment cleaned, washing done, quick trip into town, lunch with a friend and then a fair bit of thumb twiddling through to 6:45pm when we were picked up and whisked off to the airport.
Checked in and in the Qantas lounge by 7:15pm.
I got my lounge special, Jack & coke, we must be on holiday.
This is going to be our longest trip away yet, 101 days in total, but we don’t quite miss all of winter.
Adelaide – Dubai The flight was about 13hrs, 7155 miles, with dinner and breakfast served. Food is ok. I managed to get around 5 hrs sleep and Deb did a bit better than that with about 7hrs. I also managed 3 movies. Mule, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Glass. I enjoyed all 3 but Glass was the best. I have to admit to a few “power naps” through the Guardians. ?We landed in Dubai a bit after 5:30am.
It was about 2600 steps to the Emirates lounge. The terminal here is very open plan and so the A/C isn’t very effective. Deb spotted a couple of seats right by an A/C unit, we directed the airstream down towards us and all was good. It was 30C and humid in the terminal, when we arrived.
Dubai – London We left the lounge at 6:55am to board. We got to the gate and found that one of the staff was feeling unwell, so had left the area and it meant 1 person was there to check-in about 50 people. On top of that they had 2 people doing security checks after the check-in point, swabbing most passengers for explosives. It seems that a bit of profiling was going on, we got through without a check, boarding at about 7:25am.
It took ages to take off, we taxied out then sat waiting for our turn, it’s a very busy airport. It’s about 3600 miles to London Heathrow.
We finally took off at 8:15am.
An uneventful 7hr 15 min flight, thankfully, with no sleep and more movies, (Aquaman, Replicas and Jonathan) Jonathan is a bit different.
We landed at around 12:30am and were in our ride by 1:10pm.
We arrived at our Mayfair “flat” by 1:45pm. Our home for the next 20 days. I have a head cold, runny nose and sneezing. It’s driving me and everyone around me nuts. I’d hate to know what others on our flights thought of me!
We love our flat, lots of room and a great location, short walk to Hyde Park and Oxford St.
We had a bit of grocery shopping to do, yes, even on holiday domestic duties have to be done! It turned into an interesting walk. We turned left out of our front door and set out on a straight 650m walk to the nearest Marks and Spencer foodhall. On the way we couldnt help being stunned by the buildings and up market shops in the street. Lots of Mercedes, Porches and a few Bentleys on the streets in amongst the Black London Taxis and double decker red London buses. We walked through a park next to where the American Embassy used to be (apparently the building is being redeveloped into a five star hotel) up the road a bit further and crossed over busy Oxford St to M & S. The foodhall/supermarket was very different from home, lots of prepacked foods – lots of packs of sliced meats and small goods, sliced cheeses, prepacked salads, oven dinners, etc, not a lot of fresh foods. On the way out there must have been 30 or 40 selfserve checkouts and only 2 operational full service checkouts.
The walk back was just as interesting as the walk there, but the streets were getting busier. It’s funny how peak hour in a city overseas when you’re being a tourist is always so much more interesting than your home town.
It’s 6pm and neither of us is showing signs of jetlag. A shower to freshen up a bit and a quiet night for us, London and The Tower await tomorrow. We are so looking forward to our first full day exploring.
Number of Views :836
The adventure begins!!
I bet you were everyone’s favourite person on the flights. Hopefully the cold goes away quickly.
Day 1!!
Love you both xx
Greg is still sleeping, I hope so too.
Love you both too ❤️
Hi!
Curious about your preparation for the trip. Where did you make lodging reservations in advance? Favorite guidebooks or did you do all of your route planning via the internet?
Ed and I are really enjoying your photos on Facebook. Thank you for adding a description to each one.
Claire.
Hi Claire, we did all of the planning via the internet. In London we got an Airbnb, close to most things so we could walk. We loved it.
We started planning a year before, using the internet. For London I had a long list of things to see and do (we didn’t get through them all so hopefully we will return ?)
I booked all of our accomodation for the rest of England using trip advisor to find the best rated B&B’s. I have used that method for along time and never been disappointed with any accomodation, restaurant or cafe that I have chosen in the top 1-4. All accomodation was booked about 8 months before we travelled in England and everywhere was as advertised. I think the English do B&B’s well. We also researched on the internet what to do and see in England and pretty much had an itinerary planned before we arrived.
If you do go, we recommend getting a National Trust membership, it has paid for itself many times over and it took us to places and gardens we might not otherwise have visited.
It was hard work putting that altogether (60 days of our holiday). I knew I couldn’t do it for the rest of the holiday.
For Scotland and Iceland I found a tour company called Nordic visitor. They have different length self drive tours for you to pick, they book your accomodation & car and give you a booklet re the places you visit and ideas of what to do. You deal with them on the internet. They are very helpful. Naively I didn’t realise there is still a bit of work to do planning what to do each day. It would have been easier if we had done a bit of work on this before we left home. But as time has gone on we are getting in a rhythm of planning a few days ahead. Happy to talk to you more about this if you would like. In Iceland we should have had a few more days, for the distance we travelled.
We tend to finish our holidays a bit more extravagantly, nice, relaxing way to finish. For Ireland which we head to next we have booked a tour, with a guide/driver for the two of us. We are already looking forward to not having to do the planning each day and having someone’s knowledge of the area to draw upon.
Has been an amazing holiday so far, we have seen & learnt so much. I love that every day is different. Happy to answer any questions you have and recommend anywhere we stayed that we particularly enjoyed.
Glad you are enjoying the photos. Deb