Category: 2024 London+

Thursday, January 11 – Harrow on the Hill

You’ve been on edge, waiting to hear how I slept, haven’t you? Well, I have some surprisingly good news to report. By 7:30 last night I was done. Unable to keep my eyes open. So I gave in and went to bed. Fell asleep straight away. And then I woke up at 12:30am. Ugh! Fortunately though after about 30 minutes of reading I was ready to go back to sleep. I didn’t wake up again until 8:30am. Awesome! I wasn’t in a hurry to get out of bed either; spent the next couple hours there reading. A nice morning!

I spent the afternoon working on my first Journal Entry for this trip. It took longer than expected, as I ended up writing more than typical (sorry about that!). Also, getting things set up for the new separate London trip page took some time; especially since I had forgotten how I had formatted the pages for the other trips from when I did the editing last summer! I’m a mess!

I had a fun evening though. My hosts, Mary & Tony, invited me to join them for dinner. A home-cooked meal? Yes, please!

Friday, January 12 – Harrow on the Hill

Even though I left several years ago, I’ve remained on the emailing list of several London museums and entertainment venues. I guess I could have stopped the emails, but I kind of like reading them. And yesterday I received a very interesting email from The Royal Albert Hall. It announced two shows in March by The Who, to benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust. I would definitely like to attend that! Tickets went on sale this morning at 9am. I logged into the RAH website at around 8:50 and was informed that I had been placed in a holding area with all of the other interested folks; at 9am we would then be placed in a random order queue to acquire tickets. Okay. Well, 9am rolls around, and my number is…4,000 something. Yikes! (not Taylor Swift terrible at least!). It took me about an hour to get to the head of the line, and by then I figured my chance of getting a decent seat was minimal. However, I ended up snagging one in the 7th row of the stalls, which I was pleased with. I imagine the fact that they’re doing two shows, and I only needed one ticket, helped get me to a good spot. So I now have two concerts to attend at The RAH during my stay here. Some of you know about the other one, but I’ll hold back those details for later.

After being a slug all day yesterday, I decided I needed to get out today and do some walking around. I went down to the South Harrow area and continued out further to Northolt. On the way back I picked up some groceries at ALDI. (This is exciting stuff, isn’t it?) The only two photos of (questionable) interest from my walk are presented below…

Travel Notes

In Journal Entries from past trips I’ve gone through some of the things I’ve done to prepare for an extended time away from home and outside of the U.S. Probably not worth repeated them here, other than to say I basically have done all of the same things, including items like using a VPN in conjunction with local wireless internet access, and purchasing travel medical insurance. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

One additional thing I’ve done for this trip relates to my phone. Last summer I finally upgraded from my iPhone 6. It was long ago no longer supported by Apple, and some of the apps stopped working. I gave in to planned obsolescence! In addition to the physical SIM card, the new iPhones now also offer the option of installing two eSIMs. I used one of those eSIMs for my AT&T service in the U.S., and for this trip I downloaded a U.K. data-only eSIM. This U.K. SIM cost $6, offering 3Gb of data with a 30 day validity. This compares to AT&T charging me $10/day for international service (with a maximum of $100 over a 30 day period). The caveat is that the U.K. SIM is data-only, so voice service is not included. But that’s not a big deal for me. (I can make cheap (or free) phone calls when I have WiFi access) Also, the 3Gb of data may not seem like a lot, but I have the option of topping it up if I run low before the 30 days are up.

While we’re on the subject of new electronics, I also bought a new laptop over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. My previous one was 12 years old, running Windows 7 (also no longer supported). The wake up moment occurred in the fall when it booted up to the dreaded blue screen! I was able to restore its settings, but was a little concerned! (Remember when I dropped the laptop at the Bogota airport security checkpoint last year? And it kept on ticking? I have to say that laptop was a trooper)

Final piece of housekeeping…

These first two Journal Entries have been brutally boring, I know. But bear with me, I promise it will get better. I plan on heading into the city tomorrow and do some roaming around. Hopefully some good photos will be the result!

Tuesday, January 9 & Wednesday January 10 – transit from Madison to London

Welcome back everyone! Thank you for continuing to follow along as I once again escape a Wisconsin winter.

Before I begin to document this latest adventure, I wanted to make you aware of updates I’ve made to the website. This main page of the site remains unchanged; a continuous reverse chronological scroll of all of my Journal Entries dating back to day one (January 10, 2019) . Added though are some menu items. There are now separate pages for each trip I’ve taken since the origin of the journal (e.g., 2019 South America, 2022 Hawaii). These new pages are set up in a grid style for each trip, with each Journal Entry having its own individual link (no scrolling). The entries are identified by number, location, and date. Also, the Google Map created to track my island hopping last year was pretty popular, so I’ve gone back and developed maps for the previous trips too (and there will be one this year as well). In addition to the Journal Entry grid on each of the new trip pages, there is also a link to the Trip Map. Please let me know what you think of the changes. Hopefully you will find them helpful. And I’m open to any suggestions regarding other format changes.

Okay, let’s get on with it…

After last year’s manic pace (13 countries/territories over 100 days), I decided this year to base myself in one location and take short out-and-back trips from there. It required little contemplation to determine that London was the logical place to plant myself. Although it’s not exactly an escape from cold weather, it’s generally an improvement over Madison (as I write this it is 42 degrees here and 23 degrees in Madison). It’s definitely a less crowded time of year to be here. It provides easy travel access to a multitude of places. And finally, I really enjoyed my time living here and am thankful I have the opportunity to return for an extended stay.

I had an early departure from Madison on Tuesday (6:44am). This proved fortuitous, as a winter snow storm arrived overnight Monday and was expected to last into Wednesday morning. I decided to wake up at 1am on Tuesday to see how much snow had accumulated and check the status of flights. Fortunately there were only flurries at this time and no flight disruptions. The previous day I reserved a 4am Lyft ride to the airport; much earlier than I normally would for a 6:44 flight, but I wasn’t sure what the road conditions would be like, and I wanted to have time to put a contingency plan in place in case the Lyft driver bailed on me! Once again, luck prevailed as the snowfall remained light, my driver arrived on schedule, and the flight remained slated for an on-time departure. The only hiccup occurred after the plane pulled away from the gate. Since it had been sitting overnight, the plane had accumulated some snow and ice and required deicing. The wait for the deicing trucks and the actual deicing of the plane resulted in a one hour departure delay. But again, I lucked out because I had a massive layover of 8 hours in Newark.

As the airlines continue to devalue the use of their airmiles, I decided to cash in some of mine for a business class ticket to Heathrow on United. The one-way fare cost me 80k miles + $6 (I like the six dollars part!). In addition to having the business class seat, I was also able to access a lounge at Newark reserved for business class travelers on international flights. This was a nice bonus, considering my long layover.

The flight was comfortable, but uneventful. The meals were alright, but I thought the entertainment options were pretty thin. The interior of the plane seemed outdated too (a Boeing 767). And I didn’t sleep very much.

We landed around 6:30am on Wednesday (12:30am in Madison). One final advantage of the business class upgrade was the availability of an Arrivals Lounge that United has at Heathrow. It isn’t very big, but has many private shower rooms, which I am sure is its main drawing card. I definitely took advantage of this perk. Following the shower, I chilled out a bit in the lounge and then made my way to the Heathrow bus terminal for the ride into London.

A tube strike was planned in London for this week, so that transport option from the airport was off the table. I have to say though that during my time here I ended up taking the bus to and from the airport more often than not. When compared to taking the train, it’s much less expensive (cost: £1.75), requires no transfers, stops at the same place (South Harrow Station), and probably now takes less time with the Superloop express service to Harrow (thanks for the tip Mary!). It’s funny, at Christmas Holly and I were reminiscing about her visit here, with the late night arrival at Heathrow and our bus ride back to my place.

Sidenote: The tube strike was called off by the time I arrived in London, but as I noted above, the bus was the better option anyway.

Many of you who read this journal came to visit when I lived in London (specifically, Harrow on the Hill), and I’m thankful for that – a lot of great memories. Well, I’m very happy to say that my accommodation this winter will be in the same house in which I lived from 2007 to 2010 (can’t believe it’s been 17 years since I arrived to work in London, thanks again for recruiting me Ed!).

I became friends with Mary & Tony, the owners of Byron House, during my time here and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. I last visited them during my Europe trip in January of 2020. Well, in addition to the two flats on the top floor of the house which are currently under long-term lease, they also have two smaller flatlets on the second floor. And one of those was fortunately available for me to rent from January through April. Perfect!

A lovely accommodation! And the rent is a reasonable £850 per month, which includes weekly washing of sheets and towels and access to the washer and dryer for my personal laundry. Thank you so much Mary & Tony! (and for the arrival goodies!)

I arrived at Byron House around 10:30am and enjoyed catching up with Mary & Tony over tea. Following that I figured it would be best if I got out and did some walking around, to both enjoy the beautiful day and fight back any urge I had to fall asleep!

For those of you who haven’t visited, Harrow on the Hill is a quaint, historic village located northwest of London near Wembley Stadium. It is probably best know for being home to the Harrow School, a prestigious boarding school for boys. Founded in 1572, the school’s list of distinguished alumni includes seven former British Prime Ministers (Churchill amongst them).

To follow are some pictures from my walk around the Hill…

For the rest of my walk I ventured down to Greenford, where I used to work. The next few pictures are from that area, and will probably only interest those of you readers who worked there. For the rest, feel free to scroll on past!

Surprisingly, the Wenzel’s sandwich, bread & pastry shop is gone. That was another popular lunch spot for us expats!

Let me know if you’d like me to check out any other of your favorite spots from the past!

I spent the evening getting settled in, unpacking, and attempting to stay awake as long as possible! Was I able to avoid jet lag and get a good night’s sleep? Check back next time to find out! (quite the cliffhanger, right?!?)