London 2019 – Day 1

Steps today: 21 760

Blogging and Facebook together is starting to feel redundant… but for the sake of posterity, I will persevere!

The flight was fine, I didn’t sleep much but it seems as the years go on I am less and less able to get some good solid hours in during the flight and I always have a successful Day One. So I don’t really try that hard anymore.

Get a load of these new windows on the plane: no shades! you just select your level of opaqueness by pressing the button which makes the view all dark blue but you can still see out….  so cool! The flight attendants now instruct passengers to set their windows to clear instead of raising the shades when it's time to land.

Customs was a breeze! We were so lucky, we waited in line maybe 10 minutes and when it was our turn to present ourselves at the counter, the customs officer just (seemingly) rubber stamped us through; normally in the U.K., it’s the 3rd degree.

We got to the hotel by around 11, and lucky for us the room was ready so we quickly unpacked and headed out to Kensington Gardens.

We saw the Albert Memorial, Kensington Palace and the Sunken Garden, Italian Gardens, Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and then a snack at the Lido. It was nice, but it didn’t really make us feel like we were in London specifically. It’s a great park, we had a nice few hours, but I was done with it after we ate.

I wanted to hit some more iconic sights so after lunch it was on to: 7/7 Memorial, Memorial to animals in war which I thought was extra cool:

Marble Arch and the Still Waters Statue among a peaceful environmental movement (Extinction Rebellion, it’s all over the news and might interrupt some more of our sight seeing plans if it continues):

Oxford Street and Selfridges (I wanted to take a picture of the inside of the main door, but I was being poisoned by the perfume fumes and almost had to run out of the place!!)

We stopped for an al fresco lupper at Côte in St Christopher's place and freshly energized by that longer stop, we regained enough energy to explore Mayfair.

We walked through the 3 old timey shopping arcades (Picadilly, Royal and Burlington), saw the building were the Queen was born (which is now a Chinese Restaurant) and meandered the 40 minutes back to the hotel, getting in around 6PM.

The weather is on the hot side, next week it will go up to 25!!! I am so not prepared.
I had to force myself to call it a day even though it’s still light out - I don’t want to get sick and I have my usual Day 1 feverish symptoms. I will be fine after a shower and by the time I get to bed, it will be after 9.

Good night.