I recently had the honour of heading to London with my eldest daughter for a celebratory birthday trip for her 38th birthday! I took the short flight from Victoria to Vancouver where I met Ashleigh in the Air Canada Signature Lounge. We started the trip with very fine martinis and delicious steak while looking out at our aircraft.
We traveled in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner nonstop from Vancouver to London and wow - it was wonderful! I’ve had the good fortune to travel internationally for both business and pleasure fairly frequently prior to covid. I’ve been on many flights in economy and I’ve also had the good fortune to be upgraded to business class at times and at times booked business class for long-haul flights using our frequent flyer points. Ideally, it would be well worth saving up or using frequent flyer points to travel business class. For long-haul flights the pods allow you to stretch out for sleeping and the amenities and service are pretty impeccable as well. I slept like a baby for 6 of the 9 hours!
Floating down from the clouds, we touched down in London around 12:00 pm BST the following day. A fairly easy albeit long walk to the customs area where it was fully automated. Easy to use even for me and we were once again in the cattle-style lineup for our final processing and baggage claim. Oh, fun fact, Hugh Grant was also in the lineup. Just like a normal person.
Off to baggage and then out into the Heathrow buzz with cars and buses jangling by. We opted for the taxi cue and we were driven to Pimlico by a very chatty and jovial driver. A more economic way would have been the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station and cab from there. We were just a little jet lagged so we chose to sit like zombies in the cab and catch our first glimpses of London.
This was our home for the next nine nights. A lovely townhome in Pimlico. It was a perfect central location.
We were very jet lagged on our arrival but we still managed to find a pub and a little curry place for supper.
And so to bed! Let the London adventure begin!