Let’s get this out of the way as far as informative blogging goes, Norwegian Air: you get what you pay for. As for a 11 pm flight from MCO to Gatwick, London fortunately for me, that just meant a “dreamliner” where the dreams were questionable but the flight did it’s job. Lucia tells me the food was par for the course airline delicacies and the in-flight entertainment included some snoring neighbors (sorry, not sorry). 1 kilo over on your bag can cost you a pretty penny and don’t let the conversion trick you, over means over in metric too. My bag lost its handle on the way over but at least WE MADE IT TO LONDON, and a sudo-Disney hour wait a customs, just to make sure we felt as ease, I’m sure.
London!
Much like my previous abroad forays, I like to operate on Wifi only and level up my anxiety, builds character ya know. Unlike my previous travels, everything was in English! So beyond a bit of well intentioned “pardons” and “excuse us”, we managed our way on the train, to infamous “tubes”, and on our way to The Mad Hatter Hotel (more on that later) for a quick, throw the dress and pants in the shower to steam, brush the teeth, back out the door, change.
The tubeFirst trip down under London
As many travel columns would remind you, take your first day slow while you adjust! As I would remind you, fool your energy-deprived body into total emersion and go have High Tea!
To the Savoy we must go
Tea TimeTurn the corner to paradise
Tucked in a unsuspecting corner, The Savoy is a Fairmont Hotel that was built on the river Thames in five years and opened on August 6th, 1889. As the first luxury hotel in London, it was met with much pomp and circumstance with its crowd stopping use of electricity. Today, teatime is served in the Thames Foyer, complete with pianist and plenty of natural light.
Tea TimeBlooming with interest
Tea TimeThames Lounge striking a chord in our hearts forever
There are many words to be said here and since a picture is worth 1000 of them, I will say just a few and allow the photographic account do the rest. It was everything one could hope from a traditional teatime. Beyond however much blood you may of had to sell to walk in the door, the experience and the memory was well worth it. Every crumb from the sandwiches was like edible gold to us. We were on a cloud 9 and it was made out of clotted cream and raining delicious tea.
Tea TimeA "proper cuppa"
Tea TimeA treat with the chef
Tea TimeDon't do it yourself
Tea TimeThree tiers plus more
Tea TimeLady-like
Tea TimeScones from heaven
Tea TimeBy this point, who has room
Tea TimeA Gentleman's Tea
Tea TimeBanana cafe is life
As for the rest of our first day adventures, we decided to do ourselves both a favor and attempt to walk again having just relieved ourselves of many British £’s and gained several American lbs, the best exchange rate of our whole trip
Street Adventures
Making her way downtownA stone labyrinth
Many a sidewalk, many a monument
The Women of World War 2The Women of World War 2 in London style
As we walked our way back to our abode, the sun set the lights flickered on with their best city gleam, the Thames giving great contrast to the crisp city corners with its finest murky waters
World of watchingDon't be confused by the skies reflection, that water is brown
We said goodnight five hours ahead of our internal sense of reasonability and set our clocks for 8 am with great anticipation for our next day’s adventure
Mad Hatter HotelHome at last
