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Europe 2024: Revisiting London
posted : Sunday, December 15, 2024
And with that we arrived at London, at an ungodly hour of just past 5am in the morning.
So I mentioned that the one good thing out of the schedule change is that I get an extra day in London, sort of. Which isn’t a bad thing, I don’t have to worry about missing my connecting flight to Geneva, and I get to revisit some of the places I have been to previously too. Immigration was not an issue because of the early hours and Singaporean passport, and our luggage was supposed to be sent straight to Geneva so we were out fairly quickly, freshened up a bit and set about killing some time in the airport because, well, it would have been too early to head out to town, guessing most things aren’t open that early. Plan was to start with Borough Market, but the sister wanted to exchange her pound notes - apparently paper notes are no longer accepted but you can exchange them for the new plastic notes at post offices so we identified one near the market and that became the first stop.
 Not busy at 5+am in the morning  Few shops around too at the arrival hall of T2..so after browsing at a small M&S we settled down at the only cafe we can find.  Finally heading out at around 8am. Joining the morning peak hour lol but ok la we got a seat early on and just ride all the way through  Exited at London Bridge station  Gloomy day!  Off to Borough Market after settling the pound note exchange exercise  I didn’t get to explore it properly last time nor eat properly coz I was constrained by a limited budget lol. Had lots more time this time round.  This smelled heavenly and looks very inviting on a cold day  So we bought. Mushroom risotto  I remembered wanting to try this last time and didn’t so redeeming myself now, I thought English fish and chips are a must. Decent  Had this apple crumble dessert too  Ventured to Borough Yards next door to explore but artisan products aren’t really our thing so  Heading to our next stop, but before hopping on the tube we checked out the Tower Bridge  Hi Ben. Finally had a good picture.  Hung out along the banks for a bit, then decided to head towards Regent St area. But dropped off early to check out the sights along the way - including a revisit of these 4 lions.  Trafalgar Sq and the Natural History Museum  Piccadilly Circus revisited too  Thought this street is gonna look amazing at night when the Christmas lights light up…which will happen by the time we get back to London after Vienna but we won’t be here at night either About 3pm and we kind of ran out of things to do on the street. It’s just shopping, and we aren’t buying anything because most things are more expensive than what we can get back home. So we decided to just head back to the airport, idea is we can probably hang out in one of the Priority Pass lounges, and I even harbored the thought of maybe showering before the flight, because in my mind it has been more than 24 hours since I last showered, even if the cool weather meant I didn’t sweat or anything.  We took sort of a wrong train that looped at T4 before heading to T2/T3..and so were stuck in it for ages at T4.  Back to T2!  Plaza Premium Lounge is the only one I can access on the Priority Pass network, so here we are. And what a waste of quota Well to keep things short - it was a terrible lounge. Crowded, food selection and quality was poor, and on top of that there was no aircon. Europeans and their idea of air circulation zzzz. So we wrapped up in double quick time and wandered around the airport, ended up getting one of those takeaway sandwiches and just camped near our gate to eat, and the sister was close to concussing at this point lol. Flight to Geneva! Considering we had large luggages, budget airlines are out of question and settled for Swiss Air, reasonable price of just over 100 bucks, and while it wasn’t a consideration at the time of booking (actually options were quite limited because originally we were supposed to land at like 4pm), Shared the interline story previously and the sister had AirTag in her luggage so we were monitoring to see if it made it to the plane lol. Anyway it was a pretty comfortable flight, no food and both of us slept through most of it from the moment we settled down haha.  There’s a chocolate souvenir though. And I’ll just end this here - off to Switzerland! |
