Days 1 and 2: Travel Hell, a Sunday Roast, and a Canalside Stroll

June 14-15 2025

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This entire blog from Day 1 on is being written after the conclusion of our trip. Unlike last year, we just didn't have time to write while on the go. If you've followed the blog until now, you'll know we just posted pictures every other day or so with the promise of captions and text later. Here it is! The travel days following this post will be filled in over the next couple of weeks.

We started our journey with a flight out of Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Actually, our journey started with a drive to BWI from State College. As most of you know, State College has a pretty small airport and it's difficult to get cheap international flights originating there. It also makes scheduling of international flights a bit of a nightmare, with likely long layovers. We can save a significant amount of time, stress, and a not insignificant amount of money by driving to a major hub. Last year on our trip to Poland, we flew out of Newark. That airport is a little farther away from us than BWI, and is a not the best point of origination. We found a good flight to London out of BWI. We also found that if we stayed a night at a Wyndam hotel near the airport on our return, we could park at the hotel the entire time we were away for free. This ended up being a genius move, since we got to the hotel at the end of our trip after 9 AM. A drive back to State College in the dark after a long day of travel would not have been pleasant, or safe!

We got to the airport with plenty of time to sit on our hands before boarding our 9:20 PM flight. Flying the red-eye overseas with the least amount of fatigue is a trick I have not mastered. It's a 7+ hour flight from BWI to London, so theoretically, a long nap is possible. But even with noise cancelling headphones and a white noise app to further isolate you, there are still a lot of distractions. The take-off, the initial round of beverages, the food cart, all before they dim the lights, reduces the amount of time for the nap. On top of that, the seats in a Boeing 777 are not too comfortable back in economy class. 

I hadn't slept well the night before our trip, so I though sleeping on the plane might be easier given how tired I was. But I wanted to be sure I got some rest. I wasn't about to fully sedate myself with prescription medications (didn't want to be groggy the first day). A couple of wines worked pretty well on my return flight from Poland last year, so I tried a couple of wines again and added a benadryl for good measure. Not as good a result. It may have been the woman with the tiny bladder who kept banging into Vicky, who was in the aisle seat, on her multiple trips to the bathroom. Those bangs kept waking Vicky up, and the disturbance propagated to me. I may have gotten two hours of sleep.

London Heathrow is immense. Customs was a breeze, but we still had to take a tram and walk about a half mile to get to the subway station at the airport. The subway ride into London from Heathrow is long, about an hour with the stops. There was a quicker way, but it would mean a change of trains or a hike to get to our hotel. The local subway we took dropped us off at Kings Cross Station, about a quarter-mile from our hotel. We arrived at Heathrow before 9:30 AM and were in our hotel room not long after 11.

We picked a good spot for our 5 days in London. The area around Kings Cross is hopping, and most of the major subway lines connect at King's Cross. Kings Cross is also where we could catch the train to Scotland in 5 days. The hotel, a Point A property, was passably good. It was newly renovated, clean, and relatively cheap. (Less than $200 a night in London is a bargain). But our room was tiny with no windows. The staff seemed to be almost entirely Ukranian, and were very nice. The restaurant/bar was no great shakes, so we never used it. Thankfully, there was a great pub next door that opened for breakfast, so we we made that place our morning habit.

King's Cross Station

Platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter movies is at King's Cross Station

The square in front of Kings Cross Station (right).

We took a short rest (were were really tired), but had decided to get through the day as much as possible to reset our biological clocks to local time. 

Vicky had booked us a table for Sunday Roast at the Lighterman in the early afternoon. Sunday Roast is a London tradition. It's a meal that's served in many pubs and restaurants every Sunday afternoon. It's a meal that can have several courses, but centers around roast meat. You can usually get roast beef or chicken, but sometimes other meats or multiple choices. The meal comes with numerous sides, including Yorkshire pudding, roast vegetables, potatoes, and dessert. The Lighterman was on the Regents Canal less than half a mile from the hotel, and was well-rated. But it was a disappointment. We had a reservation, but service was slow. The food was mostly mediocre, and the Yorkshire pudding was poor. Yorkshire pudding is a kind of baked pudding that is made by pouring an eggy batter into hot roast drippings and baking it. It puffs up. It should be tender and savory. Ours was overdone and downright tough. This was the beginning a series of meals that made us begin to think that London food really wasn't all that good. Thankfully, that was remedied later in the week. 

The remains of a mediocre Sunday Roast.

Lighterman's is at Granary Square on the Regents Canal. The canal is 8.6 miles long and cuts through an area north of central London. It was built during the time of canal building (early 19th century) and is still used by pleasure boats and is also a place where many people live on or have shops on canal boats. The area near Lighterman's on the canal is loaded with shops, pubs, event spaces for music, and a water fountain park where kids in swim suits (or nothing!) frolic around the jets of water shooting from the square. There are always people with pints in hand outside the canalside pubs. We stopped in at Word on the Water, a "London Bookbarge" (a bookstore on a canal boat moored at the canal). It had an amazing amount of good literature crammed onto a tiny vessel. People even fish in the canal. I aksed one guy what he was fishing for. He said "Whatever I can catch!". He told me people sometimes catch zander, a European perch similar to the walleye, in the canal.

Regent's Canal.

Have your fortune told at the Regent's Canal.

Canal underpass.

Kids playing in the water fountain park at Granary Square

Nice way to keep cool on a hot day in London

Word on the Water Book Barge

Canal side event venue

Grazin' in the grass is a gas baby can you dig it?

By the time we walked back to the hotel, even though it was early, we were pretty gassed. But we decided to stretch the day one more hour to help reset our clocks. We sat down in the outside seating area at the Water Rats pub next door to unwind and people watch.

Time to relax at the Water Rats pub.

A pint and some people watching

Back to the Beginning

Day 3: Britain's Treasure Trove, and Jazz in the Evening