We Made it to London!

On Wednesday morning I woke with a start up at 5:35am. My phone alarm was supposed to go off at 5:30 (I forgot to switch it to AM instead of PM), so thankfully my internal alarm was working!

We finished packing up our bags, called for our Uber ride, and left the hotel at 6:15am to go to the Munich airport. Our driver pulled up in a classy black Jaguar. As we pulled onto the Autobahn (the freeway that has no speed limit), he informs us there is no reason to have a car like his if you don’t intend to drive fast. He wanted to show off the car’s speed but there was quite a fair amount of traffic at this time of day. He did manage to speed in and out of the cars pushing 180-200 KPH, which is the equivalent to going 110-125 MPH. He said when traffic is light, he normally drives around 220 KPH, which would be about 140 MPH. I was thankful for the heavier traffic this morning! I just took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and tried to carry on normal conversation without thinking about how fast we were driving. I guess he was courteous enough to give us one last German experience on the autobahn before we left the country!

We booked our flights for London only about 2 days before we were to leave Munich. We nabbed the cheapest flights we could find that would leave at a decent time of day. The flight with Easy Jet was a quick hop across the English Channel.

Once we arrived at the Gatwick Airport in London, we had to figure out how to actually get into the center of the city. So we followed the escalators up, down and all around until we went through passport control and finally made our way toward the exit.

Then we promptly bought an Oyster Visitor card that we will use to pay for all public transportation while we are here.

We made it through the gates and then had to figure out which platform we needed to get on the train.

We first took a 30-minute train ride from the airport into Victoria Station. We were so excited that we actually figured it all out without getting lost!

Once we got the Victoria, we hopped on the central line of the tube to go to Paddington Station. We could exit this station and then walk a few blocks to our hotel.

Paddington Station has a huge glass ceiling that just opens the place up.

Naturally, there had to be a reference to cute little Paddington at this station.

As soon as we exited the tube, we could feel the excitement of London all around us: people buzzing by, little black cabs going the “wrong way” down the streets, and buildings with rich history.

We easily walked to our hotel thanks to the City Mapper app on our phones. We were quite pleased to find that we were in a quieter neighborhood of London.

Park Grand London - Lancaster Gate — Park Grand London – Lancaster Gate

Our hotel is situated in a block of beautiful white buildings with rod iron details. It has a quaint little garden in front with tables and chairs.

As we walked into the door, we were greeted by a gentleman who offered us warm washcloths from a silver platter. We were a little early for check-in, so we were able to wait in a special lounge room with locked doors.

Once we got checked in, the host personally walked us to our room to make sure that we had everything we needed. It felt good to kick back on the bed and take a deep breath so we could plan our next steps.

By the time we ventured out again at 2:30pm, it was “tea time”, which translates for us “coffee break”. We found a cute little place called Sheila’s Cafe just down a block from our hotel.