I had set the alarm for 06:00, but I was awake about 45 minutes earlier. I wish I would find it that easy to get up early when I have an early shift. Once the alarm went off, we got up. We took turns having a shower and I packed the last odds and ends. Then we headed out. Our usual luck had run out and we just missed a tram . Still, the next one was not far behind, and we had left home in plenty of time. Even with the later tram, we had time to pick up a coffee and a cake from Costa Coffee. Graham had an Americano and a lemon muffin, and I had a flat white and a blueberry muffin. Our train was already there. While I snapped a quick photo of our second mode of transport for this trip, Graham checked with the guard if weekend first upgrades were available. He was quoted £30 per person. I felt it was not really worth it for a two-hour journey. We went to settle down in our reserved seats.
I had every intention to spend the entire train journey reading. Ever since I made the New Year’s resolution to read one book per week, I have been positively inhaling books. By the end of March, I was up to 38 books. I started a book at the beginning of April, and I was still labouring with this almost four weeks later. The irony is that I read this before in my teens and I do not recall that I struggled with this. I enjoyed reading it this time, but I was just making really slow progress with it. I was determined to get this finished before we left for Canada. Still, I got side-tracked with other stuff and in the end, I only read for about 45 minutes.
The trip down to London seemed to fly. Soon we were approaching Euston. We had left a beautiful blue sky in Manchester, but as we made our way south, the sky looked increasingly gloomy. When we got to Euston, it looked as it had rained recently. Fortunately, by then it had stopped. Our plan had been to catch an Uber, but there was a lot of construction going on outside Euston and it was not obvious where they would pick up from. Instead, we walked to Euston Square and took the Circle Line. Apparently, this no longer goes all the way round and we had to switch trains, but as they left from adjacent platforms, this was not an issue. I could have done without the stairs at either end, but the walk to the hotel was actually pretty pleasant. On the way, we passed a Five Guys and figured an early lunch would be welcome. Unfortunately, they were still closed. We pushed on to the hotel. We got checked in, but as expected, the room was not ready. We left our luggage and went exploring.
Right in front of the hotel was a bus stop with a bus route that took us right through central London. The journey was interesting, and we got off at Trafalgar Square. From there, we walked to the South Bank.
When we got there, it was officially lunch time. We had some lunch at Las Iguanas at the South Bank Centre. We did not want a full meal and decided to share some nachos grande with an addition of chilli con carne and some olives. Graham just had water and I had some Coke. We enjoyed the food, but we still had room for dessert. Graham had margarita cheesecake with lime sorbet, and I had a churro sundae, which consisted of churros, vanilla and salted caramel ice cream, chocolate ganache and dulce de leche sauce, whipped cream, and cotton candy. Be both loved our desserts and were pleasantly full without feeling stuffed.
While we had lunch, it had been raining, but thankfully it had stopped. We took a wander along the South Bank. We have always enjoyed walking in his area, but I did wonder why this is. The place has a great vibe about it, but the South Bank itself is rather ugly with 1950s brutalist architecture. However, the views across the Thames are rather stunning and we thoroughly enjoyed them. We also explored some areas that we previously just had walked past. The first was Gabriel’s Wharf, which I actually rather liked, but Graham found somewhat strange. Gabriel’s Wharf consists of lot quirky and artisan shops and unique restaurants built around a courtyard area. I was surprised that a lot of the shops were closed on a Saturday afternoon, but there were definitely shops there that I could imagine spending money in. We also checked out the OXO Tower. We had a look at a photo exhibition and checked out the shops in this area. This time we agreed that it is all a bit strange. It turned out that it foreshadowed things to come later in the trip.
Graham wanted to check out the Tate Modern. We had been there years ago shortly after it opened, but I remembered very little about this trip. I was up for it. The building that houses Tate Modern is not exactly beautiful, but it is most certainly impressive. The building also moves. As soon as we entered the building, I got a sensation of feeling lightheaded. I had been absolutely fine before I stepped foot into the building and could not understand what was happening. We went to use the bathroom and then we sat down for a bit. It was then that Graham mentioned that the building moves. I was so relieved. I definitely did not get to be sick right at the beginning of the holiday. Once I had acclimatised a little to my surroundings, we went to explore a little. We had a look at two galleries. Neither of us is really into modern art, and we found what we were looking at rather strange. We decided to give up on this. It was only the next day that I found out that they had a special exhibition titled Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider. This would have been of some interest to me. However, this was not advertised at the Tate Modern. I saw an advert for this the next day in an underground station.
We headed out. Access to the building is a little surreal. From the floor where the galleries we checked out are, there is an escalator that goes down, but it skips the floor where the main exit is. Instead, it goes down to the basement. Fortunately, there is a ramp there leading to another exit and we took this option. We returned back to the South Bank via a residential area. There were some interesting views in this area as well. We ended up near the Globe Theatre. I took some photos of this. By then we decided we were all walked out and headed towards the nearest bus stop.
We did not have long to wait for a bus. We decided to take a bus to Liverpool Street station as plenty of bus routes go from there. There used to be a number 11 bus from Liverpool Street to Victoria that went past a lot of the famous sights. When we still lived in Essex, we used to love taking this bus when visiting London. I was delighted when we checked a board showing bus routes and their corresponding stops and saw that this bus route was still listed. We headed out to the bus stop that was indicated, but the bus route was not listed there. I checked this on my phone and noticed that this bus route no longer comes to Liverpool Street. I have since found out that there is a very similar bus route 26, but you are always wiser after the event. The next bus that arrived was to Tottenham Court Road, which got us to the general area where we wanted to be. We had planned to get dinner somewhere in the West End before heading back to the hotel. The bus route turned out to be quite pretty as well taking in the City of London and went right past St. Paul’s Cathedral. The only surprise was that when we got to the terminus stop, this was not particularly close to Tottenham Court Road. It was however very close to the Seven Dials area, which is in turn only a hop, skip and a jump from Covent Garden. I have always loved this area, and this worked out great.
We took a slow walk around the Covent Garden area. We figured as we were there, we may as well have dinner. There used to be a lot of chain restaurants around the side streets, but they all had gone. A lot of the restaurants that are now in this area did not open until later, required reservations or had huge lines. Eventually we found something that looked interesting. It was a restaurant called Street burger by Gordon Ramsay. I don’t normally go for all the celebrity chef hype, but the menu looked good, and the prices were not over the top. We decided to give it a go. They did not have any tables available inside, but it was quite sheltered outside, and we went with this option. Graham had the O.G.R. Burger, which consisted of grass-fed Hereford beef, smoked cheese, house relish and salad. I had the aptly named Idiot burger, which consisted of BBQ beef short rib, smashed beef patty, smoked cheese, mushroom, tomato, and red onion. The burgers came with fries. There were options to upgrade the side, but we were happy to just run with what is included. We did not regret this either. The fries had the most amazing seasoning on them. The burgers did not disappoint either. They were juicy and full of flavour. Graham had a homemade lemonade with his meal, and I had a peach and apricot spritz, which was a mocktail consisting of apricot, apple and peach juices, spices, and Fever-Tree white grape and apricot soda. We both really enjoyed our dinner.
When I was finishing my last fries, it started to sprinkle a little. I quickly finished them, and we paid. Then we went to find a bus back to the hotel. When we got to the next main road, we saw the bus we needed going past. We located the bus stop, and we did not have long to wait until the next bus came. Shortly after we got on the bus, the heavens opened. Fortunately, it had eased off a little by the time we got close to the hotel, especially as we ended up getting off one stop to early. Still, it did not take us long to get to the hotel.
We went back to reception to collect our key. It was pretty busy, and it did not help either that people had their luggage shrink-wrapped and needed help getting rid of the packaging. When it was finally our turn, the person helping us could not find us. They had no issue finding us in the morning and we had already filled out all the paperwork. Eventually he did locate us, and we were given the key. We retrieved our luggage from storage and then headed up to the room. We got ready for bed even though it was only coming up for 19:00. Graham was asleep straightaway. I caught up online and tried to read for a bit, but about 30 minutes later, my eyes felt really heavy, and I went to sleep as well.
After an hour’s sleep, I was wide awake again. I decided to read a bit more and at one point I checked my email. There were updates on the thread about the technical issues that the ship we were supposed to go on. After everyone boarded as planned on Friday, they were told that they would remain in Vancouver until Sunday afternoon and then sail on a four-night itinerary. A day later, they were told that the cruise was cancelled and that they would disembark the following day. This really took the concept of a cruise to nowhere to the next level. This was definitely not the news I wanted to get, but I was determined that this would not spoil the first part of the holiday. I read for a bit longer and then I had another go of getting some sleep.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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