Monday, January 6 & Tuesday January 7 – transit from Madison to London
Hello again everyone. Welcome back! Thank you for your continued interest in my winter travels.
I’ve returned to London, with a similar plan as last year – enjoy the city while using it as a base to visit other places in the region. A big thanks to Mary & Tony for welcoming me back to the very familiar Byron House. I’m thrilled to once again call Harrow on the Hill my home (for a few weeks)!
I’m planning on making a slight adjustment to the Journal Entries this year. I feel like I got too much into the minutia of my daily activities previously; nobody cares if I went for a walk or to the grocery store (boring!). So this year I may not have an Entry for every day of the week. I’ll only do a post if I see or do something of interest (hopefully that will be almost daily!). This will mainly apply solely to my time in London; I foresee being busy on a daily basis during my travels away from the Capital. And I hope to avoid posting pictures that are similar or identical to those from my time here last year. No promises though! I do have some favorite locations!
My itinerary from Madison to London was identical to last year:
- 6am departure from Madison to Newark
- Loooonnnggg layover in Newark
- Early evening departure to Heathrow, with a 6:45am arrival
Like last year, I used miles to upgrade to Business Class for the trip. It was especially nice because I had the use of the BC lounge in Newark during the layover. And there is also a little-known arrivals lounge at Heathrow that I also took advantage of! I utilized the shower facilities at both locations!
I had a nice nighttime (early morning) view of the Thames as we approached Heathrow. I was lucky – sitting in a window seat on the correct side of the plane. Lit up were the Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s, the Eye, and Big Ben. I know, a photo (or two) would be nice, but I was half asleep and just enjoyed the view (maybe it was all a dream?).
After spending some time in the arrivals lounge, I was on the SL9 bus for the ride to South Harrow. It had snowed a little before I boarded the bus, but stopped (and mostly melted) by the time I made the walk up to the Hill. It was wonderful to see Mary and Tony again, and we caught up over some tea and cake. Thank you Mary!
I had an Uber pickup in Madison at 4am on Monday, and coincidentally arrived at the doorstep of Byron House at 10am on Tuesday (4am in Madison). So, a 24 hour trip! Of course, only about 9 hours of that was actual flying time!
Wednesday, January 8 – Harrow on the Hill
I tried to stay up as late as possible last night, but failed miserably, falling asleep around 7:30pm. And then woke up around midnight. Ugh! Was back to sleep around 2:30am though, and made it all the way to 10am. Not terrible, I guess. Hopefully tonight will be better!
It was really tempting to just lay around the flat all day, but I eventually found the motivation to make a trip into the city. I mainly just walked amongst my favorite places around the parks and the Thames (did 20k steps for the day). I ended up in Trafalgar Square, with a visit to the National Gallery. While there I took advantage of their daily one hour tours, where a curator provides background on 4 different works in the collection. One of my favorite activities (and it’s free; another favorite!).
