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Monday, January 6 – Thursday January 9, 2025 London and Embarkation in Southampton, England

Neil Wylie

Updated: Feb 1

On Monday we arrived in a freezing London following our flight from San Francisco. Over the last few years, we’ve justified flying business class based on a theory that if we can sleep on the plane, we will arrive refreshed and ready to go. Unfortunately, our flight on Virgin Atlantic this time was not very good and neither of us got any sleep. Compared to our flight last year, the “upgraded” cabin on the 787 resulted in smaller, more confined seats – with the seat laid flat it was like sleeping in a torpedo tube.

 

While the Heathrow Express from the airport straight into Paddington Station and the Hilton Hotel is, on-paper, very convenient – we are finding that at our age, with our various aches and pains, it’s a bit of a struggle to manage the gigantic amount of baggage we travel with from the airport to the hotel. I think we’ll be doing taxis from now on.

 

The lobby, bar and restaurant area of the Hilton appeared to be unchanged from our last visit two years ago; however, we were pleasantly surprised to find our room had been nicely remodeled – which is just as well as the rooms really needed a refresh about 5 years ago. We met up with our daughter and her husband who had flown down from Scotland to join us for the London part of the trip and after a quick drink we went down the street to an Italian restaurant called Bizzarro for dinner. It was so cold outside, like stepping into a walk-in freezer, and I was glad I’d brought my cold weather clothes with me – though even on this short walk I could tell they were not going to be enough to bar against the icy fingers of the wind which somehow managed to find all of the weak spots in my protective barrier. I began to wish those thermal undershirts I ordered had not been delayed in shipping and arrived after we’d left home.

 

Dinner was great; the food was excellent, the wine flowed (at least for me) and it was great to catch up on family gossip. On the short walk back from the restaurant I noticed two foxes calmly trotting along the road as if they didn’t have a care in the world; it’s amazing how animals can adapt to different environments.

 

The next day (January 7th) we did a full day of sight-seeing, starting with a canal boat ride from Little Venice to Campden Markets. Stepping out of the back of Paddington Station the cold hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, I felt like I was frozen to the core of my body. Not much was moving along the canal, plenty of boats, cafes and businesses but virtually no people. I was heartened to see the London Waterbus Company boat docked on the other side of the canal as we got to the Browning Basin in Little Italy and a couple of employees readying the boat to take on passengers. Unfortunately the canal boat did not have any heating, but we made the best of it and happily set off for the 45-minute narrated trip down to Campden Markets. It’s not the most picturesque trip but it’s filled with history and our host did a great job rattling off his prepared speech.

 

Campden Markets has several shopping stall areas tucked into a small area in the Campden Town area of London. The market areas are like a winding labyrinth, you may have a general idea of where you're going, but the path is full of unexpected twists and turns. After a while all of the stalls seemed to be selling the same stuff as I slipped into market stall overload and my brain turned to mush like a forgotten bowl of oatmeal left out on the counter overnight, only frozen. A quick Google search directed us to a nice warm coffee shop; the Campden Coffee Roastery offered amazing hot drinks and pastries.

 

Given the unchanging freezing conditions we decided to spend the afternoon at a couple of old favorite indoor locations, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum. At the V&A I spent most of my time looking at the outstanding Raphael Cartoons, these huge paper paintings were used to create the tapestries in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican – I’m always drawn to this room every time I visit the V&A.

 

Dinner brought us to the much-visited Flavors of India restaurant, again just a short walk from the hotel. We’ve visited this eatery just about every time we stay at the Hilton in Paddington, and it has never disappointed – it only has about six tables so it’s very cozy, but the basic Indian menu has always hit the spot. Weirdly (or maybe not) when our son-in-law tried to pay the bill with Scottish bank notes they would not accept them, which is technically illegal. In order to maintain the good feeling of the evening we decided not to argue with the proprietor, settled the bill with a card, and headed back to the hotel.

 

For our final day in London (January 8th) we skipped the hotel buffet breakfast and headed to the Brasserie of Light, which is located in the Selfridges department store, our second visit to the fantastic location with its amazing gigantic crystalline flying horse sculpture that appears to be soaring above the bar area. At $23 for avocado toast it’s not somewhere we’d come to every day, but as a special treat it’s great.

 

We attempted a bit of shopping in Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street but could not find what we needed. However at a stall just outside M&S I finally persuaded Sandra to buy a wooly hat. Venturing into the tube we headed for North Greenwich. Since our last visit to London the tube system now allows access by using a credit card – simply carding in and out and at the turnstiles, no tickets necessary and big improvement; but note that each person needs their own card.

 

The tube station at North Greenwich exits into a large concourse area adjacent to the massive O2 Arena events center. It was still bone chillingly cold and, not for the first time on this trip, I wished I hadn't lent my ski mask to my cousin the bank robber. The IFS Cable Car crosses the river Thames and affords incredible views of the east end of London. Unfortunately there is not much to do on the north side of the river, so we just stayed on the cable car for our return. In order to avoid my body temperature dipped below a critical level, it was necessary to head inside the O2 Arena and seek a warm beverage – unfortunately Starbucks was the only option.

 

For our final afternoon we visited the Tate Britain Museum, a first for us. A tube ride brought us to Parliament Square and from there it was a bit of a walk to the museum. I felt a bit like Scott of the Antarctic leading my band of frozen explorers to a place that seemed just a bit too far away, luckily for us we did not suffer the same fate as Scott and his men. It took a while for us to defrost in the museum before we could venture into the exhibits. I’d come specifically to see JMW Turner’s Fighting Temeraire painting, but while they had a huge collection of Turners, I was devastated to find that the painting in question was located at the National Gallery – the Tate Modern houses the National Collection, hence my confusion. Oh well, maybe next time.

 

Embarkation day, Thursday January 9th; we had previously arranged to get the Cunard bus from Heathrow airport down to Southampton and given our problems with the luggage on the Heathrow express we instead opted to get a large taxi from the hotel to the airport – this went extremely well with the driver dropping us right at the door to Terminal 3 arrivals, helping us get a couple of carts and loading our bags for us. As instructed, we made our way to the information desk and quickly located the Cunard representative. We had expected to be waiting around for a while before boarding the bus with a large group of other passengers, however we were shocked to find ourselves quickly stepping into a nice van with a couple from Australia and heading off to Southampton.

 

A couple of hours on the road and were pulling into the old QE2 Terminal in Southampton; we were ridiculously early – it was around 9:45 AM and boarding rarely starts before noon. With our bags handed off we waited in the small, partially heated, waiting room and met some acquaintances from prior cruises, until check-in started at 11:30AM. At check-in we were surprised to find out that our cabin had been changed, we’d had no notification from Cunard about this change – and so we were starting to get very ticked off, we spend a lot of time picking out our cabin. While waiting to go through the security check Sandra pulled up the information about our new cabin and discovered it was in the Queen’s Grills – this is the very highest grade of cabin that Cunard offers and comes with a very special restaurant and a butler, amongst other things. We stopped complaining.

 

Suite 8179 was beautiful, lots of wood paneling, mirrors and marble, ample storage, a jacuzzi bathtub, huge shower and a large wrap-around balcony as the suite was located right at the back of the ship on the starboard corner. We simply could not believe we’d been upgraded to this suite, grinning from ear to ear like kids in a candy store but we also began to suffer from serious imposter syndrome. No one had told us yet, but we were fairly certain we’d only be in this room for the first segment of the voyage from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale, but we were still very happy to experience the Grills for 12 nights.

Lunch in the Queens Grill restaurant was brilliant; located on deck 11 midships this exclusive space is amazing. There is also a separate restaurant for the Princess Grill passengers (a slightly lower grade that Queens Grill) along with a shared lounge and ample outdoor deck space for the exclusive use of Grills guests.

 

Feeling a bit exhausted and chilled we did not go on deck for the fireworks display at the sail away – we did see it through our cabin doors as we continued to unpack. The cabin was very cold and even with the thermostat set at maximum we could not seem to raise the room temperature, this prompted the first call to our butler who in turn brought in the technical team, but still the system struggled to raise the temperature. Once underway we discovered a couple of major drawbacks to the location of this cabin; we could feel a lot of vibration from the engines located at the stern of the ship – the Queen Victoria is notorious for having this problem, and second, movement of the ship caused by wind and sea swell is amplified at the extreme ends of the vessel – think of a small bird sitting on the end of a long branch of a tree in a severe windstorm.

 

We were off on the first leg of the voyage, 3 sea days to Praia Da Vitoria in the Azores.



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