London Calling
2 Days to Rediscover the Big Smoke
September 9-10, 2026
"Every great journey deserves a memorable
beginning."
Paul Goyetche (kinda)
What We Knew Before We Left
We know where we're staying; The Ampersand Hotel (pictured
above), in the heart of London. And we're starting the trip with
a bit of a splurge. Hence the above quote; Every great journey deserves a
memorable beginning.
The question is, just how much time are we actually going to spend enjoying
that memorable beginning? Knowing us, we'll probably drop our bags, grab a quick
look around the room, and then hit the pavement. There is a lot of London to
rediscover, and we're not planning on spending two days sitting in a hotel!
We have already heard back from the hotel about our early-morning arrival.
While they can't promise that our room will be ready when we arrive, they've
said they'll do their best to accommodate an early check-in. More importantly,
they've promised to look after our bags so we can head out and start exploring
London right away.
So the hotel is booked, the bags will be safely stowed, and London awaits.
Now we just have to figure out how much of that fancy hotel we're actually going
to see!
What We Now Know
We arrived at the hotel just after 7:30am. Of course, we couldn't get our
room, so after rearranging our luggage and leaving everything behind we went for
a walk. Our flight arrived early and our baggage came out fast. From landing to
hotel took less than 90 minutes. We got to airport so early, the escalators
weren't working. Security was a breeze as we scanned our passports. it took our
pictures and the gates opened. Less than a 30 second process.
After leaving the hotel, we walked around the parks and after a coffee and
pastry stop we eventually ended up at Buckingham palace where the changing of
the guards was about to happen. Complete luck as it only happen on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday at 11am. There were hundreds of people around but we saw
what we needed to see. We then went to see Big Ben but we were getting tired as
we hit the 20,000 step milestone, part of that in the airport. We ended up
taking the tube back to the hotel when we got a text that our room was ready.
It's tiny, but very comfy except for being 5 floors above a school yard where
kids are VERY noisy. It won't be a problem when school is out. Check out the
video. The windows are closed in the room but the sound is deafening.
Even with the noise, we got a good rest in the room. We both needed a shower
to revive ourselves after the flight and busy day. We ended up walking over 20
kilometers (27,500 steps) counting the airport. We ate fish and Chips near
Harrods on our second walk. A good thing we hadn't planned to ride the tube as
all train lines through South Kensington Station were not working. Apparently
someone was hit on the track. There must have been 10 police cars around our
hotel and train station and a few ambulances to boot
We were in bed by 8pm and resting for anther busy day, our last full day in
London.
On the agenda for Thursday.
Abbey Road
Little Venice
Camden
Piccadilly Circus/Trafalgar Square
Tower Bridge (Which we we to tired to get to yesterday)
More Underground/Tube and a bit less walking.
Thursday - London Day 2
The plan was to walk less. That did not happen. We managed to walk 28,000
steps while taking the Tube and even skipping the canal walk by taking the water
taxi. We hadn't planned to visit inside Tower Bridge but we did and it was
interesting. We started at Abbey Road and tried to cross the Zebra crossing.
Normally, there are a lot of people there but we went early enough. The only
problem was rush hour traffic. St John's Wood is a great area and we ate
breakfast at Panzer's deli and Market, open since 1944.
We then walked to Little Venice and then took a long boat to Camden. We then
went back to the hotel to recharge, both ourselves and our phones. Roaming is
hard on the legs and also hard on the battery life of our phones.
Tomorrow, we decided to take a taxi to get our rental car at the airport. We
will try to get the taxi to go direct to the Budget check-in instead of taking
the Tube to the airport and then a shuttle to the rental desk. The Piccadilly
Line was really crowded tonight and thought it might be hard to squeeze in the
luggage onto the subway.
Travel Notes
In London, no need to buy a transit pass. Simply scan your credit card on the
way in and out and as long as you use the same card, when you reach the max for
that day, it simply stops charging but lets you in. Since our credit card are on
phones in a Google wallet, all we do is present our phone at the gates. When the
final charge comes, I will let you know how much it cost us.
Also, we usually
use Airalo e-sim's for phone service but we are trying something different. Bell
Mobility offers a 14 day roaming plan in Europe. It cost $75 which is a lot
cheaper than the $17 a day for roaming. It lets us keep our phone numbers and it
uses the data plan gigs from our home plan. Myrna has 100 gig and I have 200 so
that won't be a problem. I will report on how this worked at the end of the
trip. We still got a message that we were being charged by the day but we were
told to ignore it. Time will tell but if you need to reach us, we are still at
the same numbers.
Side note - Thankfully, both of our phone numbers are
working and we got an important call that had we not had that access, it could
have had serious consequences. It's a long story, but the problem was
solved in about 5 minutes but it would have been a nightmare had we not been
able to answer that call.
