You guys. We have been in England for 24 hours and we have seen so much! On Friday, we woke up on the airplane and landed in Heathrow at about 10:30 AM.
After getting through customs and baggage claim, we met our driver and he took us the 45 minutes from the airport to our hotel.
We settled into the Phoenix Hotel in Notting Hill and fell asleep for about 30 minutes. The time difference is 8 hours ahead of Arizona, so 11:30 AM in London felt like 3:30 AM to us! After our quick nap, we got up and started exploring the neighborhood.
We stopped at a coffee shop called Pret a Manger which we have since discovered is literally everywhere.
We didn’t see any of the young royals at Kensington Palace (pictured behind Anthony), and it started raining. Since we hadn’t brought our rain coats, we hurried back to the Hotel to warm up and plan our evening. We had decided we wanted to go try the London Underground (subway system). Our driver from the airport had told us about the Tube Map App, and we used it to easily figure out a route to Duke of Argyll pub in Piccadilly Circus. We hopped on at Bayswater, transferred at Paddington, and finally ended up at Piccadilly Circus, under a giant fountain to Eros that was surrounded by many colorful people.
From here, we made our way back to Duke of Argyll pub, and enjoyed a lovely, relaxing meal. Anthony had Fish & Chips with mushy peas (mashed green peas) and I had a Meat Pie with mash (mashed potatoes) and cooked veg (peas and carrots). The rooms upstairs in the Duke of Argyll had old books all around. I found an ancient copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost!
After dinner, we walked through Piccadilly…the shops were bright and fancy and impressive, but it was raining, so we went back to the Underground thinking we would return to the hotel and catch up on the sleep we missed on the plane. However, upon boarding, we saw that Baker St. was on our route, and it was night time and drizzly foggy rain and so it made PERFECT sense that we should go look in on Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes. Unfortunately, they were out at the time of our visit. But we recorded a Marco Polo for our kids to show them that we had, indeed, been to 221 B Baker St.
After riding the Tube back to Bayswater, we were very ready for bed, and excited for the adventure to come the next morning!
Daniella Indie 