Spring Break is a great time for travel to Europe. The weather is beginning to get nice; you avoid the summer crowds; and you don't have the high season airfares. Also, for us, the time often coincides with Easter and overlaps with school holidays across the pond. Spring Break is therefore great for spending time with friends and family - and so it was for us in 2009. We considered replicating our 1999 (England) and 2004 (Slovakia) trips, where we separately pieced together air travel, hotels, rental cars, etc., and in some cases purchased locally after we arrived. However we found the best deal this time in the form of a air/hotel package from Hotwire.com and add-on tours purchased in advance from UK websites (at less than $1.50 to the pound the US Dollar exchange rate is as low as it has been in living memory).
Sunday April 5th we boarded an Air Canada Jazz Dash 8 turboprop in Seattle for the very short flight to Vancouver where we connected for the overnight Air Canada Boeing 777 non-stop to London Heathrow. A word about the 777 - this 6ft 5in writer is acutely aware of minor differences between various airlines' economy class amenities on trans-Atlantic flights. Vancouver-London is around the same flight duration as Miami-London or Paris, which we previously flew on 747s of British Airways, Air France and Virgin Atlantic. Going back over the past 30 years or more we have also flown trans-Atlantic on several other 747 routes as well as on A330s, 767s, L-1011s and MD11s. The Air Canada 777 Vancouver-London service is I believe the best long-haul flight we have ever experienced (and in both directions too).
Vancouver is clearly very ready to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Their airport is gorgeous - the international terminal way more elaborate than the city's size could warrant by itself I believe. Canadian cities seem to have a knack for using the Olympics to enhance their 'livability' for years after. It was evident during our time in Montreal in 2005 - almost thirty years after they hosted the summer games in 1976. Our four hour layover - usually a pain to endure - was very pleasant in Vancouver. We were able to sit down in a nice restaurant and enjoy a high quality lunch - not just the usual airport food court junk food - and we were pleasantly surprised to pay about the same as we would have expected outside the airport. The terminal is spacious, it has excellent shopping, food, etc., and it has nice touches to pass the time such as a salt water aquarium and various other exhibits showcasing British Columbia's marine life and the natural beauty of its rivers, forests, mountains, etc. Nice job YVR!!!
Monday April 6th we arrived in London mid-morning - pretty much on schedule - to pretty nice weather. Sunny and warmer than we had left Seattle the day before. Terminal Three was a pleasant surprise too. Completely rebuilt since we were last there. Immigration and Customs was a breeze - to my amusement Jennie emerged faster than Brittany & me. Now that UK and EU nationals share the same lines, and with EU travelers seeming to outnumber all other nationalities arriving at Heathrow, US passport holders can get through faster. But I think Brittany got a kick out of entering the UK as a British citizen for the first time (actually she's dual-citizen US-UK but she didn't yet have her British passport last time we went to England).
The hotel we chose with our package, the Gallery Hotel, is located less than five minutes walk from South Kensington underground station, a straight shot on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow. After clearing Customs all we had to do was go to the Heathrow tube station, buy our Oyster Cards, and hop on the next train. Forty five minutes later we arrived at the doorstep of our hotel. Unfortunately we encountered a problem at check-in; Hotwire had not placed our reservation with the hotel correctly and the room waiting for us was too small to sleep three. I had to make some phone calls back Stateside to Hotwire to sort out the situation but they readily accepted their mistake. Then came the incredible upside for us. While just about any of the hotel's triple rooms would have suited us just fine they were all basically full for the week; the only room available was the Rossetti, a private master suite up on the top floor with it's own rooftop terrace. While our room was being sorted out the hotel graciously served us tea in the Victorian sitting room, Hotwire agreed to reimburse the room upgrade, and they arranged with the hotel management for us to have the suite. Thank you Hotwire!!!
With luggage safely stowed in our room our first order of business was to not succumb to jet lag. It was now mid-afternoon and we needed to get out and walk in the sunlight. So off we went to Kings Road, Chelsea and headed to the nearest T-Mobile shop. Having already incurred T-Mobile USA's international roaming charges to sort out the hotel snafu, and having from the start of our trip wanted to use a local number while in the UK, we needed to switch our T-Mobile USA SIM for a UK SIM in our phone. Of the four UK mobile carriers (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange) our phone could have worked with any one of them but T-Mobile's Pay As You Go plan had the best rates so we went with that. Here's one example of why going local makes sense: on our T-Mobile USA calling plan international roaming charges for calls back to the US are $0.99 per minute plus taxes. Our calls from the UK to US using T-Mobile UK Pay As You Go were only £0.06 per minute including VAT - less than one tenth the cost of roaming.
Important Note: US and UK mobiles use different GSM frequencies. North American GSM850 & GSM1900 phones from AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile USA must be tri or quad band to work on Europe's GSM900 & GSM1800 networks. (Sprint/Nextel/Virgin America uses CDMA not GSM so they must be multi-band AND multi-mode to work in Europe). Also, most US phones are &ldquoSIM-locked&rdquo meaning they must be unlocked before they will work with another carrier's SIM (at home or abroad). Contact your carrier to find out their procedure for removing their SIM lock.
After taking care of our phone the next thing we needed was to get some currency. Visa had been handling all of our transactions so far. So with directions from the guys in the T-Mobile shop we headed off along Kings Road in the direction of Sloane Square in search of a Barclays Bank. Since Barclays participates in the Global ATM Alliance, as does our bank, Bank of America, withdrawals from Barclays cash machines would be fee-free. So, with cash now in our pockets, and while our heads still told us it was only 9:00 am, our watches (and our stomachs) were telling us it was indeed 5:00 pm, time for dinner. Thus followed our first experience of national chain Pizza Express - pretty good Italian food all the same, and reasonably priced. With appetites now satisfied we started wandering back towards South Kensington and our hotel. We stopped in at a Waitrose supermarket to buy croissants, fruit, bottled water, etc. to stock our room. We eventually returned to the hotel around 7:30 pm and, with an early start ahead of us next morning, we settled down for our first night in London.
Tuesday April 7th, our first full day in London, began early with a light breakfast in our room followed by a short walk along Cromwell Road to a nearby Radisson Hotel, our 8:00 am pick-up point for our all day escorted tour &ndash the Total London Experience. The first part of the tour focused on the City of Westminster stopping at Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square, where we saw the Tamils demonstrating, then Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and on to the Household Cavalry Museum at Horse Guards. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace is still on alternate days in April, and our day wasn't one of them, so we instead saw the changing of the guard at Horse Guards Parade. A first for all of us and an interesting contrast to the usual foot regiments' ceremonial. Our photos show the Blues & Royals being relieved by the Queen's Life Guards, the two regiments that make up the Household Cavalry.
Our lunch stop was at Covent Garden where we had enough spare time to find an Indian takeaway for great food and then shop in the market. Brittany came back to the bus very happy &ndash we had bought her what has become her very popular multicolored hoodie. The tour continued in the afternoon to the City of London, to St Paul's Catherdral, the Tower of London, and a Thames cruise back up to Westminster, and finally a flight on the London Eye, the end-point of the tour. From here we had our own mission to find one of London's few remaining traditional fish & chip shops. We had heard about it before leaving Seattle featured in a Time Out review of London's best fish & chips. We knew roughly where Fishcotheque was located - somewhere under the railway arches near Waterloo Station. After walking along Waterloo Road a little way we found it. Jennie had Plaice, Paul had Haddock, (both with &ldquomushy peas&rdquo) and Brittany ate a Hamburger. It was truly awesome &ndash a chippie just like I would have gone to as a kid, with just a few tables in the back for those wanting to sit down and eat. There were train drivers in there eating &ndash knew it would be good. When we came out it was dark, way past 8:00 pm, so we headed back to Waterloo tube station and made our way back to South Kensington. The next day would be another busy one so we crashed for the night.
Wednesday April 8th, started in a more leisurely way with Continental Breakfast at a Café near the hotel. We then strolled over to South Kensington station to buy one-day travel cards to take advantage of the 2FOR1 London offers we planned for the day. We then rode the tube over to Leicester Square and walked to the famous half-price ticket booth to see what might be available for that evening. We got half-price tickets for Grease at the Piccadilly Theatre. We then walked along Gerrard Street through the heart of London's Chinatown to Piccadilly Circus and from there up Regent Street to Oxford Circus. We were meeting Paul's Mom and sister, Mandy, who were coming up from Reading to spend the afternoon with us. We all then took the tube to Regent's Park then rode the bus the rest of the way to the London Zoo. After the Zoo we all took the bus to Baker Street station where we went our separate ways; Mom & Mandy headed to Paddington Station for their return train to Reading; we headed back to Piccadilly Circus to have a light meal before our show. Grease was great &ndash a lot of fun &ndash and afterwards we came out into the famous nighttime scene that is Piccadilly Circus &ndash kinda London's answer to Time Square with all the lights and such. It was after 10:00 pm so after taking a few photos we said goodnight to Eros and headed underground to take the tube back to Kensington. It had been a really enjoyable day.
Thursday April 9th, was planned as our second day to partake of 2FOR1 London offers, this time a visit to Hampton Court Palace. We started our day with a hearty full English breakfast at Café Milan located across the street from South Kensington station (recommended). We then took the tube down to Waterloo station where we purchased off-peak day return tickets to Hampton Court then boarded a train for the short 35 minute trip through faceless suburbia. The palaces - there are really two, Tudor and Baroque; the beautiful gardens; and the famous maze; they easily occupy a full day - more if you want to spend more time in the extensive gardens.
Our visit happened to be on press day for the special events running during 2009, the 500th anniversary of King Henry VIII's accession. We joined in with Heads and Hearts in which visitors play the part of invited wedding guests moving around the Palace's apartments with period costumed actors playing out the soap opera surrounding Henry's wedding to wife #6, Kathryn Parr. This link explains the event better than I can but our photos maybe give you some idea too. It was an incredibly entertaining and creative way to display the Palace's apartments and educational in how we learned intimate details about living in Tudor times. Brittany loved it - no way the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon could have kept her attention so focused for the better part of five hours. All I can say is if you are in a position to visit Hampton Court while this is going on, then go!
And here's a useless piece of knowledge I picked up along the way - the answer to a question that had bugged me for years. Knowing the Thames at Hampton Court is above the tidal limit at Teddington, I always wondered why Henry favored his out of town Palace over Whitehall, Greenwich, etc. At a time when river barges were the primary mode of transportation, I assumed it would have required a large amount of human effort to get from Central London up river to Hampton Court. Well, at the Palace I learned that in Henry's time Teddington Lock didn't exist and the Thames was tidal past Hampton Court all the way up to Staines. Back then barges would have floated with the morning tide up to Hampton Court and then floated back with the evening tide to London - no effort required. The other advantages of Hampton Court was its location away from the city; which kept it largely immune from plague and other diseases of Henry's time; and the garden, then undeveloped hunting forest, satisfied Henry's appetite for blood sport.
We stayed at Hampton Court until closing time and upon exiting, rather than fight the crowds all going to the train station at the same time, we found a restaurant across from the main entrance and stopped there for dinner. Nice - and when we were done we came out onto the bridge crossing the picturesque Thames (far enough up from London to be very pretty) under a clear sky just as the sun was setting. After arriving back at Waterloo we decided to take the tube on a Harry Potter mission to find Platform 9¾ and record it for posterity. Our Kings Cross photos appear at the end of the Hampton Court set. A perfect end to a perfect day.
Friday April 10th, was the day of our second escorted tour - this time &ldquoSimply Paris&rdquo. It started at the ungodly hour of 4:45 am with a shuttle van pick up at our hotel (after a 3:30 wake up call). We drove around a couple other west end hotels picking up other guests then headed over to St. Pancras International; the first part of our adventure was on Eurostar, our high speed transportation to Paris departing London at 6:26 am. I think the story of our day in Paris is amply told by our photos.
For those who like detailed narrative basically it went like this: we arrived at Gare du Nord at 9:50 am and transferred from the Eurostar to an open top bus. The next 90 minutes or so took us on a panoramic tour around Paris taking in all the major sights. Around lunchtime we were dropped off at the Trocadéro for our trip up the Eiffel Tower. After a photo stop at Trocadéro we walked down through the Palais de Chaillot, crossed the River Seine over Pont d'lena, and arrived at the Tower. We had a fast-track admission scheduled for 1:00 pm so after quick snack and bathroom stops we were escorted as a group to the second level. We were free to go our own way from there - just had to be back down by the Bateaux Parisien dock at a preset time for our scheduled boat tour departure. We decided to take the stairs back down to save time waiting in line for the elevators. The boat tour left promptly and sailed up river along the left bank, rounded the I'le de la Cité just past Notre Dame, then returned down river along the right bank back to the Eiffel Tower. From here we re-boarded our bus for the short trip over to the Louvre. Perhaps it was due to Good Friday being a holiday but the Louvre was jammed everywhere we went. We fought our way through crowds to get to the Mona Lisa, then managed to get a good look at the Venus de Milo but after that it was tough to really see anything without getting jostled around. But this whistle stop visit was worth it - we now know something of how the Louvre's 9+ miles of passageways are organized so a future visit on our own can be planned more like a surgical strike to see only what we really want.
After the Louvre there seemed to be something of a communication breakdown between our guide and the bus. We believe some of our group, who were very late emerging from the Louvre, caused us to miss our bus connection. So, once everyone was assembled, our guide had us all walk from the Louvre to l'Opéra, a distance of around one mile. Interesting stuff along the way but it was all very rushed - a shame. With hindsight, we would have preferred the guide to give everyone the option at the Louvre of going solo from there on and make their own way back to Gare du Nord for the return Eurostar. At that point we still had around three hours to play with - this might have been enough time to grab a Metro pass and ride over to Montmartre, see Sacré Coeur, and find a Bistro or Brasserie for dinner. As it turned out, when we got to the street behind l'Opéra where the bus was supposed to meet us it wasn't there so more time was wasted waiting around. Eventually the Guide had us all go off whereever we wanted to go for food but by then he was only able to give everyone one hour before we needed to assemble again for the bus back to the station. A couple blocks from l'Opéra we found a pub that agreed to prepare food for us in the time available (they did) and we had a great Belgian ale there too. But it wasn't great food, it was overpriced, certainly not what we had hoped we would have time for before leaving Paris.
After our rushed dinner we eventually got back on our bus, arrived back at Gare du Nord, boarded the train and settled down for the ride back through the French countryside, through the Channel Tunnel, and across Kent. We were back in London at 9:30 pm where our morning shuttle van was waiting for us. We were the first drop-off in Kensington, and in bed by 10:30 pm. All in all we feel even with the mess from the Louvre onwards the tour was still very good.
A couple observations about Eurostar, which was a really great experience. For a good part of the way between Paris and the coast Eurostar runs alongside the A1 Autoroute. Once it gets going the Eurostar runs at 300 kph / 186 mph and you really know it as you pass the cars on the Autoroute seemingly standing still. We have driven that route north from Paris and we know traffic runs between 80 and 90 mph (posted speed limit 130 kph / 81 mph). It is the combination of high speed train from city center to city center and the Channel Tunnel that makes Paris (and Brussels) a truly viable (and affordable) day trip destination from London.
Saturday April 11th, marked the beginning of our Easter weekend trip to Reading to visit friends and family. Our original plan was to take a train early enough to have some time before lunch to start exploring the many changes Reading has undergone in recent years. However, with the cumulative effect of our week so far we were somewhat sluggish getting going. Besides, the day started out kinda grey and drizzly, and we knew there were going to be challenges on the tube (several lines closed for upgrades over weekend) so we were in no hurry. We left the hotel around 11 and took the tube one stop to Knightsbridge and went in to Harrods. There are many eating places in this huge store so we stopped there for a late Continental Breakfast. From Knightsbridge, rather than try to contend with that weekend's tube hassles, necessitating multiple changes, we walked to Paddington across Hyde Park. At the station we bought open returns for Reading from the automated ticket machines and boarded the next high speed train due to leave in a few minutes. Twenty five minutes later we walked out onto Station Hill in Reading - first stop, Museum of Reading. The museum was a great way to help Brittany get some background and orient her to Paul's home town. We then wandered around the town center - through many familiar places and some new and not so familiar. But even the familiar places have all changed from how things were ten years ago. Paul very much approves of how Reading has developed during the almost quarter century since he left the town.
Our afternoon passed quickly and we eventually found ourselves at The Oracle, now Reading's primary shopping, dining & entertainment destination. This huge and beautiful complex was under construction in 1999 - our last time in the town. Paul was very excited to see it; he wasn't disappointed, and pleasantly surprised at how The Oracle has not superceded Broad Street, rather integrated it thereby expanding Reading's attractions instead of replacing the previous center and hastening its decline. If anything Broad Street is better than ever, as part of the overall town center plan - being now completely pedestrianized really enhances its appeal. It's safe to say Brittany liked The Oracle - she needed some boots and we found them at &ldquoOffice&rdquo an unfamiliar shoe store but apparently a popular chain in the UK, with great coolness value for Brittany. The evening soon rolled around and we gathered with family and friends at Old Orleans, one of The Oracle's many restaurants, very much an American themed place. A good time was had by all and we dragged the mealtime out quite a bit longer than was anticipated as we chatted and got caught up with everyone. After dinner we went back to Angie & Keith's house - where we had been invited to stay overnight.
Easter Sunday April 12th, started with a leisurely morning at Angie & Keith's. Angie had taken the trouble to keep some hot cross buns from Friday (what America passes off as a hot cross bun is an abomination) and we greedily consumed them - simply wonderful all toasted and buttery. We then took a short drive out to Hambledon in Buckinghamshire to enjoy a brief rural diversion. We visited the ancient church, stopped in the village pub for a local ale. And we found an Art Fair being held in the village hall so we stopped in there too. It was very thoughtful of Angie & Keith, a very welcome escape for us after our very busy week in the urban landscapes of cities and town. After Hambledon, we were driven back to Reading and dropped off at Paul's parents' house. We said our goodbyes to Angie & Keith, who had their own family to visit for Easter, then spent the rest of our day, effectively the closing hours of our Spring Break trip at Brybur Close. Around 10:00 pm we were dropped at Reading station where we took the next train back to Paddington. A short tube ride had us back at out hotel around 11:00 pm.
Monday April 13th, was our travel day back to Seattle. Basically uneventful; we checked out of our hotel in the morning, ate breakfast at Café Floris (recommended) on Harrington Road between The Gallery Hotel and South Kensington tube station, and got on the tube headed to Heathrow. Air Canada flight departed on time and we arrived in Seattle on schedule.