Last night we caught up with my cousin and her partner who we haven’t seen in a number of years. We spent a few hours looking at the Christmas lights around central London. They are as spectacular as I was hoping. After a wander we went out for dinner at Andrew Edmunds in SoHo, fantastic little restaurant serving “Modern European” meals. I had the steak and frites which was delicious. I’ve never had carrot and chestnut soup either, which was equally delicious. The chestnut was a very subtle flavour. Would highly recommend this restaurant if you are ever in SoHo in London.
This morning after relocating from the hotel to the apartment, we headed down to the Battersea Power Station shopping complex. This is something I’ve always been interested in and really wanted to see it once it was redeveloped. Very glad it wasn’t just turned into a mass of expensive apartments. Combined this with a ride on the new Elizabeth Tube Line which runs all the way from East London out to Heathrow.
The Battersea Power Station is the largest brick building in Europe, and is now grade 2 listed (heritage listing). The building will be familiar to a lot of people, as it was featured on a Pink Floyd album cover. It’s also in the Art Deco style
It operated as a power station from the 1930s up until the 1980s, according to the history display inside, it once provided 20% of greater London’s electricity and it survived the blitz in the 1940s as the Luftwaffe used the steam and smoke emanating from the giant chimneys as a guiding beacon as to where London was.
Apart from the architecture and the ability to ride a lift to the top of one of the chimneys, it just a massive high end shopping complex. Should you go there ? If you are into architecture, Pink Floyd or shopping, then yes. If you are pressed for time there are dozens of things I’d do first.
Had a somewhat average coffee from Joe and the Juice. I ordered small but somehow got a bucket of coffee. It was weak (no surprise given the size of it). Was not cheap either, 3 coffees set me back about $A32
I was impressed with the LEGO store and the Polestar store. I got to sit in the new Polestar 3 which hasn’t been released yet. We also decided to get a photo with Santa to record the occasion of being in the UK for Christmas. Surprisingly the Santa photo was free! I was expecting them to charge £50. There was no queue either. At home free Santa photos would cause a massive queue.
I’ll let you in on a great secret on affordable London accomodation. This won’t be a secret to anyone who has spent a considerable amount of time in the UK, but almost no one in Australia will have heard about them. It’s the Premier Inn Hotel chain. They are a no frills style hotel, but the beds are comfortable, rooms a decent size and very clean. They are all over the UK and they are all basically the same design. If you pay up front and well in advance you can get so utter bargains. We are staying in Hammersmith in West London, right near a tube station on the the Piccadilly, Circle and Hammersmith lines, so it’s super central with easy access to Heathrow and other parts of London. Breakfast was included in the rate, and it was £58 (~$120) per night. There is zero chance you could find accommodation of this quality in an equivalent part of Sydney for that price. Premier Inn are everywhere and rates vary per area (they also have cheaper capsule like accomodation). Prices will be more if you book later or during peak times, but there are bargains to be had. A night in London won’t necessarily bankrupt you.
The reason no one much outside the UK knows about this is they don’t open their booking through the usual aggregator sites like booking dot com.
Is there any downside ? Not really but they don’t really have flexible rooms. They are all double bed rooms and will let you have a rollaway for a kid, but anything else you need to book multiple rooms.
Our flight arrived a little earlier than expected yesterday and we managed to clear immigration and customs very quickly before getting on the Piccadilly line direct to Hammersmith. We are staying here for a night then moving into a friend’s apartment for a week whilst he travels back to Australia for Christmas. After catching up for a few drinks we went to a local curry house just up the road in Shepards Bush. The place looks fantastic and the food looks amazing, but we were not in luck, after waiting 30 minutes for the Papadam, we then waited over an hour for the mains. There was no sign of them and by this time all three of us were falling asleep at the table, so we just settled the bill and left. I will have to get my London curry fix another night. We ended up just grabbing a sandwich at Sainsbury’s on the way back to the hotel.
Today’s flight to the UK had the potential to be super interesting. Historically (well 30 years of post Soviet history since they opened their airspace) this flight tracked west across Russia, right across Europe and into Heathrow down the Thames.
However that changed with recent global events and that airspace is closed again so it’s added a few hours to the flight and now tracks east through the Bering Strait over northern Canada, down through Greenland, over Scotland and into London that way. I was excited that I would see lots of ice, look towards the North Pole, maybe see an iceberg or two…..
What did I see ? Fucking darkness. It’s fucking winter on the winter solstice and I saw fuck all. One of the disadvantages of travelling in the northern hemisphere winter I guess. I’ll have to do this trip one day in the northern summer.
It's all about the coffee 