Last night was our final night in London. Laura and I left Archie with Mum and Jo and then headed out to Soho to find the London Gin Club - something Laura had kindly tracked down for me and thought it would be a great way to spend our last night in London. The club is in an old small pub - pretty casual and unpretentious - which was exactly what we were looking for. ...
So we arrived into London on Thursday afternoon (6th August) from Paris after catching the EuroStar train across the channel. We were expecting a little more from the EuroStar – the name builds up a certain expectation – and we were left wanting. It probably didn’t help that the air conditioning in our carriage was on the blink either – making for quite a warm journey indeed. Thankfully one of the staff members was extremely helpful and did everything he could to make our journey more comfortable. He initially started handing out bottles of water, but seeing the sweat pumping out of Archie he decided to try and move us. After a little exercise in seat logistics he eventually found us two sets of two seats – we wouldn’t all be sitting together, but at least we would all be a little more comfortable in an better air conditioned carriage. The journey would have been horrible without this – as Archie was really getting quite irritable in the heat. ...
Let me start by saying - This place is ace! We landed into Gatwick from Naples, almost a 3 hour flight, and had to make our way to Heathrow Terminal 4 - which nothing seems to go to directly! We converted our left over Euro’s into Pounds which was almost exactly enough to buy our bus ticket from Gatwick to Heathrow - luckily its a free ride for BA travellers from Terminal 5 to Terminal 4 on the bus. ...
London - Our initial taste While we were briefly in London before departing to Ireland for a week, we managed to squeeze in some sight seeing - jumping on a ‘Fat Tire’ bike tour. This was a leisurely 4 hour bike ride around central London, and was a great way of getting oriented. While we didn’t go into any of the sights on the tour, we were given a pretty good commentary on each sight and its history. This gave us a pretty good idea of what we should come back and see. ...
We have now left the Spanish speaking countries behind us after about 7 weeks of traveling. We find it hard to stop saying ‘Gracias’ to people - but I’m sure we will get over it. Our flight out of Barcelona was delayed by about 30min, but we managed to touch down on British soil fine. We were dreading hitting Heathrow a little - you never seem to hear a good story about that place - but we were very surprised when we only queued for about 5min in immigration and waled straight through customs. Literally took us about 10min! We spent longer in the duty free grog shop buying gifts for our hosts here in London. ...