Mediterranean cruise and European adventure - Day 1 - London

Travel - Austin to London, UK 

We're off on another adventure, this time to Europe! We began our journey with an overnight transatlantic flight to London departing from Austin at 4:15 PM on Tuesday, June 12 with a scheduled arrival the following morning at 7:20 AM. For the most part our flight was uneventful, though we did leave a few minutes late. We began boarding on time, but for some reason, we got all jammed up and stopped in a huge long long long jetway. It was the longest jetway I’d ever been in and we were there for perhaps 15 minutes or more. We never learned the reason, but once we did get on board, things moved relatively quickly and we were underway and they served dinner shortly after we got into the air. We had sprung for Norwegian Premiere class and we had loads of legroom, a nice bit of recline on the seats, a leg rest that came up, and blankets.

After dinner, we all watched a little more from the entertainment options (Emmaline was delighted they had her favorite movie which is Singin’ in the Rain). I was exhausted having been up really early that morning for a workout (that I also work up extra early for and then couldn’t go back to sleep). So I immediately fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then I woke up and slept somewhat fitfully off and on for a couple hours. Finally a couple hours prior to landing, I threw in the towel. Roger was awake, though he did eventually go back to sleep for a little while and Emmaline woke up shortly after. She tried to sleep a bit more but gave up and asked to watch the end of Singin’ in the Rain so I let her do that.

A short while after, the lights in the cabin began to come up slowly to glow a faint blue, then a little brighter, then a little brighter, then they changed warmer and warmer until they were orange, then that got slowly brighter until it was light and they started serving breakfast, around 6 AM. Breakfast was a little odd (salad and cold cuts with a dinner roll for the meat eaters and salad, a couple of pieces of fruit and a muffin for me in the vegetarian category) but nobody was super hungry anyway.

I finished the end of my movie (Murder on the Orient Express) and it was wrapping up just as we landed. We arrived at passport control which was BONKERS. After almost an hour there, we were stamped and on our way. We grabbed our luggage and went to find train tickets. We purchased really crazy expensive tickets for Gatwick Express train to Victoria station and also picked up a reloadable “Oyster card” for the public transit system. All told we spent over $200 (US) for transit in the UK, which I had not budgeted for. Then we grabbed some muffins and headed for the trains. Arriving on the platform, we realized we saw our train on the next platform over. We quickly booked it over there just as it was leaving. Sigh. No problem, there would be another one along soon….on another platform. Moving platforms again, we waited. Then we heard an announcement that there was a train routing issue and there was a terminating train at our platform in the way. So we had to move platforms again. Finally on the correct platform our train came and took us on the 30 minute trip to Victoria station.

Once at Victoria station, we were a bit turned around, but eventually found our way to our hotel. It being 10 AM, our room wasn’t ready yet so we dropped out bags and went back to Victoria station to catch the train one stop up the line. We exited and followed some directions I found online for watching some pieces of the changing of the guard without being in the giant crowds of people at the palace. We made it just in time!








After the men in funny hats marched about a bit, we went over to Buckingham Palace to look around, but there were still oodles of people there and the guard was still doing their bit behind the gates and we couldn’t really see anything so we went to go eat. The cute tea and sandwich shop I had on my list to visit was closed for renovations so instead we took the tube back to a restaurant near our hotel. The food was fine, but the service was probably some of the worst I’ve ever had. I’m usually pretty forgiving. Being a waitperson is a tough job, but we were weary and after asking for water, I kid you not, four times in the span of 25 minutes and not receiving so much as a drop I was losing it. After our extremely long and tiring lunch, we went back to our hotel where we all crashed for an hour. It was hard to get up again, but we forced ourselves (or in the case of Emmaline, was dragged bodily of the bed) and went out for our reservation for the London Eye. It was a little early to go, but too little time to really do anything, so we just got off the tube and wandered around a bit. We checked out Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which is completely and totally covered top to bottom in scaffolding. His little face peeks out and that’s it. That was sort of a bummer. I know it’s necessary to keep him in top form, but it was still too bad for us.







When it was time for our London Eye reservation, we went over and got right on with our timed tickets I had purchased in advance. It was a great day for the Eye which no cloud cover or haze or anything. We could see really far. Emmaline was pretty underwhelmed by the Eye and I think it might have been more fun if we had that iconic view of Big Ben and Houses of Parliament (which were also somewhat obscured by equipment and scaffolding).



After the Eye, we tried to book it over to London Bridge to see if we could gain entry before they closed at 5:30. Alas, we arrived at 5:35 as they were closing the doors. Instead we walked around the Tower of London and did a little shopping in their store. Then it was back on the tube to Victoria to grab dinner near our hotel. Dinner was unfortunately sort of underwhelming and overpriced (again). I was not doing well on the restaurant front! After dinner we returned to our room and all of us crashed out instantly.

Click here for Day 2.