It’s me. Hi. I’m the one back in the UK. 🙂

That’s right – I’m baaaaaack! After making my first post-COVID UK trip in May 2022, I’m delighted to be back again in 2023, putting me back on track for my once-a-year visits to my favorite country. And this time around, I’m traveling with a few friends, I’m going from England to Wales and back again, I’m geeking out with Doctor Who fun, and more! But first things first, though not necessarily in that order.

I’m actually already in Wales! As I write this post (or start it, at least), it’s Saturday late afternoon and I’ve already been in the UK for a couple of days. In fact, I’ve already landed in and left London and I’m currently in Swansea, Wales for some Doctor Who fun. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been here multiple times before, most recently in 2016, to attend Regenerations, a small, but fun, convention. That’s largely the reason why I’m with so many friends on this trip as we all go to conventions in LA and/or Chicago, so we figured we’d go to this one and make a UK trip out of it! But it started a couple days ago when we all landed in London, so let’s go back there.

This trip started like most others, with me heading to MSP to catch my nonstop Delta flight to London. I know there’s been at least one other trip where I flew on a Wednesday and had SUCH an easy time with security and that was true on this Wednesday as well. I absolutely waited longer in the Delta line to drop my bag off than I did in the line to get through security! That gave me plenty of time to get some steps in at the airport and then to check out the newest Delta Sky Club, which as you’ll see below, was really nice and quite large. There’s been quite a kerfuffle the last week or so with the news that Delta is REALLY changing their SkyMiles program starting in 2024, which includes changes to Sky Club access, but I figure while I’ve still got unlimited access through my Platinum AMX card, I’ll keep using it. 🙂 I just had a drink and a snack while chilling for a bit and then wandered to the gate, where I met a local friend of mine who’s going on the trip with me (in addition to having his own fabulous itinerary after the rest of us fly home). While we weren’t seated next to each other, we both enjoyed some “enhanced” comfort in Premium Select on our flight, which went perfectly fine and arrived on time, despite leaving about 20 minutes late. That actually worked out really well though because, in addition to the flight with us on it, my friend Bill was on another flight coming from Detroit and my friend Felicity was on one from Chicago. And we all landed within ~20 minutes of each other! We knew we would be landing within less than an hour of each other, but with our flight being a bit late and the other two flights being a bit early, none of us had to wait long. Bingo!

As always, here’s a few photos of the travel process.

A couple of shots from the new Sky Club. Fancy!

The meal service was standard and relatively tasty. Dinner, on the left, was chicken with risotto, green beans, and a little potato salad, while breakfast, on the right, was an egg and cheese pastry.

With air travel out of the way and bags in hand, we proceeded to head into London via the Underground (as you’ve heard from me before, I tend not to bother with either the Heathrow Express or an Uber as I just don’t need to rush into the city) to drop bags at our hotel. Because our flights landed before 730a, we knew we wouldn’t be able to check into our rooms, but we were hopeful we could at least stash our bags with no issue. Thankfully, that proved to be the case! Regular readers will know I often stay at Premier Inn Hub hotels in central London, but this time, to make our travel a bit easier (because it’s closer to Heathrow and is easily accessed from other parts of London), I suggested the Premier Inn London Kensington Olympia, which I stayed at once, back in 2016, so that’s what we all booked. Although not fancy in the slightest, I’ve always found Premier Inn hotels to be clean and comfortable, with good wifi and strong water pressure (something I always appreciate, which isn’t always found outside the US) and, while this hotel delivered on those things for the most part, the wifi left a lot to be desired. They have a regular, free wifi and an “ultimate” paid option and neither were great, especially in my below-ground room. Not a huge deal because we were just there for a night, but still a bit annoying. My friend had a room on the ground floor and didn’t find the wifi as spotty, so your mileage may vary. Also, I’ve lucked out in the past at least once or twice by being allowed to check into my room hours early, which was always unexpected, but welcomed, so I was only slightly dismayed to find that you can only do that now by paying an extra £10. Obviously that won’t break the bank, but it was just nice to be given it before. Oh well!

Look at me, talking about what the hotel stay was like before even giving details about the day! Again, we arrived early enough that we certainly had time to kill before our scheduled event (more on that shortly), so we caught the Underground from Earl’s Court to Embankment to do a little wandering and have a little bite to eat as some of us were starting to get hungry. None of us did much sleeping on our flights, making us all a bit out of it, so wandering without any specific destination was a nice way to get reacquainted with the city. 🙂 We walked around Charing Cross, Trafalgar Square, and Leicester Square, snapping a few photos along the way, staying mostly focused on keeping ourselves awake. As much as I enjoy travel, I do NOT love the first day in a new country, trying to enjoy things and see/do fun stuff, while also doing whatever you can to not collapse. I just don’t do well on little sleep! But check out a few photos below, which at least prove we pushed through the fatigue for awhile.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to spend too much time wandering as we fairly soon had to make the move to our scheduled event, a Hidden London tour of Down Street. You may remember I’ve done Hidden London tours before, with visits to Piccadilly in 2019 and Clapham South in 2022, and I strongly suggested (well, told) my friends awhile ago that we should consider doing one on our trip. They were all open to it, so I booked tickets to Down Street when they became available earlier this summer. Tickets for these tours are released in batches, it seems, and I think they sell out somewhat quickly, probably because they’re always so interesting and they let you get to places you otherwise couldn’t get to, so I grabbed the Down Street tickets immediately when they went up for sale and contemplate getting tickets for the other tour they had available during our trip (Baker Street), but ultimately didn’t as I wasn’t sure if my friends would enjoy the first one (I assumed they would, but didn’t want to be responsible for them wasting their money). Somewhat bizarrely, the tickets for Down Street were nearly double what I’ve paid for previous tours (and double the Baker Street tickets, too), but it looked just a bit more interesting, so we all agreed to pay the £90 price and hope for the best. I’m really glad we did though as it was a great tour, as you’ll see below.

Down Street didn’t actually have a long life as an Underground station, operating only from 1907-1932. We learned from our guides that this was likely because of its location (tucked away a bit on a side street, rather than facing the main street) and the fact that its affluent location in Mayfair meant that the people nearest to it really had no need of public transportation. And on top of that, it’s very near two other stations, so there just wasn’t enough demand to justify keeping it open. After closing, it sat disused for awhile until England’s involvement in World War II drove the need to create underground bunkers that would be safe from bombing. When I toured Clapham South last year, I saw the impact on that station, which was to create a purpose-built underground shelter for citizens to live in at night to protect them from bombings, but at Down Street, the decision was made to covertly transform the disused station into the headquarters of the Railway Executive Committee. During both world wars, this was an extremely important group to protect because they controlled the operations of all of Britain’s railway (not just the Underground, but ALL railways, which were vital in moving both troops and supplies around), so having a well-protected, hidden base of operations was ideal. The actual executives would have some freedom to come and go from the secret HQ, but the “worker bees” had to stay down there for 2-3 weeks at a time, which meant that both office and living space had to be constructed in the disused tunnels, including phone exchanges, dorms, a kitchen, bathrooms, and more. Walking through it and seeing the remnants of this time was SO interesting and gave a neat window of what one sliver of life was like during this tumultuous period in the world. Oh and did I mention that Winston Churchill himself would also visit the space to work with the REC? On several occasions, he even stayed overnight, which led to an interesting custom of turning the clocks off at night because he apparently HATED the sound of ticking clocks. The bombing above, cigarette smoke, clacking typewriters, and ringing phones below were all fine, but not clocks. I guess when you’re leading the whole country, you get to make demands like that!

Take a look at the photos below to get a feel for what this tour was like.

These images show parts of both the “regular” and “executive” bathrooms. Even way underground during a war, executives were afforded nicer bathrooms, more comfortable office chairs, and better food than the “regular” workers.

The front and back of this switchboard station gives a glimpse into the complexities of having so many phone lines. The switchboard was always staffed by at least one woman because it was thought that the higher voices of women could more easily cut through all the background noise.

This was another great Hidden London tour! I continue to be impressed with them and I’m so glad we were able to include this in our itinerary. And to my delight, my friends were all engaged by it and were thankful they got to experience it. So I should have booked Baker Street as well, after all! I’ll be sure to add that to a future itinerary. 🙂

With the day winding on, we were certainly getting more tired, but we were also all hungry. The weather, which had been pretty sunny before our tour, started to turn grey and rainy, so we opted to pop into a tasty-looking tapas restaurant just up the street for both food and shelter. We were all really glad we did because El Pirata was absolutely worth it! We didn’t want to eat a ton because we knew we’d be having dinner later when our other two friends arrived, so tapas gave us a chance to try several tasty things without filling up too much. I would definitely go back!

By the time we finished our tapas, the rain was pretty minimal and it was time to check into our hotel, so we made our way back to the Premier Inn. As describe above (and shown below), the rooms were fine, but we were all just grateful to have a place to rest for a bit and for the chance to shower off the post-travel ick. Our other two friends arrived while we were doing that, so we caught up for a bit and then went out to find some dinner. We struck out at an Italian place because we didn’t have a reservation, but then had success at the next place, which two folks from the group found on Google. The fine folks at Maria G’s were happy to seat us and we enjoyed a nice meal and good conversation there. Unsurprisingly though, we were beyond ready for sleep before it got too late, so we were all happy to make that happen after a short walk back through more light rain.

My London home for one night. If only the wifi worked better, I might have started blogging sooner than now!

While that wraps up the first day of this trip, it doesn’t catch you up yet because it’s now Sunday night as I finish this post, so we’ve already finished our Welsh weekend and will be heading back to London tomorrow! Don’t worry though – I’ve still been enjoying myself and taking pictures along the way, so I’ll hopefully be able to catch you up on our fun weekend very soon. We’ll be on a train for a few hours tomorrow and don’t have much planned when we get back to London, so look for another post soon!