London travelogue

We visited London on this week. As I didn’t have a free Internet connection in the hotel room, I’ve to write my thought a bit delayed. Sorry about this.

The journey began early on Tuesday morning; we woke up at 4.30, hurried ourselves through breakfast, got Aapo on his feet, packed the car and drove to the airport. The flight was at 7.10, an inhuman hour, but the price was cheap enough to justify the time.

Tax-free shopping lost its charm a few years ago, and now airports seem to be in par with high street shops — thus we headed almost directly to SAS lounge. I got my gold card last year, and this was the second flight with it… Probably there won’t be a gold card next year.

SAS lounges are excellent, as they are spacious, well designed and quiet. They offer also fruits and bread, not just booze and cookies. I also managed to change our seats from the back of the plane to the front with the help of the SAS lounge manager.

The lounge had a splendid view to the runways, and Aapo was really excited about the cars and planes. Maybe he’s interested in engineering?

The flight was uneventful. Aapo got an own seat, and dozed off after being carried on the corridor for a while. The plane landed in Stansted, and we took Stansted Express to Liverpool Street station; 47 minutes from the airport to the city — not that bad.

Our hotel was located in the middle of London, a couple blocks from the Oxford Street tube station. The idea was to pay a little bit more for the accommodation and avoid using the tube. It worked really well. We had to use the tube only twice, when going to and fro airport.

The Court House Hotel was a luxurious one, big rooms, friendly stuff and an excellent breakfast buffet that included Voss water…

London was hot and humid, temperatures hovering around 30 Centigrades. We explored Soho, Covent Garden and Oxford Street for shops, cafés and restaurants — reviews coming later on.

I had also business to attend, but the lack of free Internet kept the most of the other parts of the day open. One would expect to have free Internet connection in a five star hotel — I could exchange one of the three phones in the room (one in the bathroom, as required by some criteria for getting five stars) to Internet any given moment.

We met also friends that live in London and southern England. Really loved to chat with them and now we are waiting for them to visit Finland in August.

On Thursday there was a three hours black out in the vicinity of our hotel. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed, so we ended up to a Japanese grease spot that cannot be recommended to anyone — my stomach still hurts when thinking about the lunch aftermath.

Fortunately, the black out was fixed before we had to leave — otherwise we would have needed to go to some other tube station with taxi, as Oxford Street station was closed. The tube was running, but the station had no electricity.

We got to Stansted easily, fed Aapo, checked in and went through the security checks easily. Having a sleeping baby in a stroller seems to ease your way.

Stansted is not exactly a business airport. Finding SAS lounge was a sort of an adventure. The main waiting hall didn’t have any sign of any lounge. We had to ask for the directions, and then found out that the lounges are near the gates, in separate buildings.

We took the train to the gates building and after a bit searching finally found a miniscule lounge with free drinks and cookies…

The hot weather exploded into a thunderstorm that forced several planes to land in Luton, and it was unsure whether Blue1 plane could land on that night. The weather got gradually better, the plane landed and left after one hour delay. We were back in home at 3.00 (AM) on Friday morning, exhausted but happy.