Stay away from where, you may ask? Why, the UK, of course! 🙂

Although it’s only been about five months since my last trip to my favorite destination, I’m back, back, back again, baby! The genesis of this trip is a little bit different though as I normally wouldn’t come back so relatively quickly, but I found a deal that made it an easier decision. As regular readers likely remember, I nearly always fly Delta, especially internationally, but a number of years ago, I opened an American Airlines credit card because it came with a 100k mile bonus. I can’t remember why I wanted those miles at the time (I think it was for an LA trip for my annual trip to Gallifrey One), but I do remember that I used just over half of those miles almost right away, but the rest of them have just been sitting there since then. I’ve always thought I should use them at some point, but never did, until I saw awhile ago (through Thrifty Traveler, I think) that they were having a flash sale, offering really great deals on travel when using miles. I figured I’d see if I could actually find something workable for the miles I had and, to my surprise, I could! This round-trip flight only cost me 34k miles, so I figured it would be a shame to not take advantage of that if I could make it work schedule-wise. And I could! I even had some miles leftover that I was able to use up (along with some cash) to slightly upgrade my seats. Perfect!

Fast-forward to this week and the time to travel was upon me. And wouldn’t you know that, in a winter where we got almost NO snow in the Twin Cities (literally one of the least-snowy, warmest winters on record), we got eight inches of the stuff at the start of the week. I wasn’t really worried about it because my flight left on Tuesday evening, but after getting all that snow on Sunday, it ended up snowing AGAIN pretty much all day Tuesday. Now, if there’s an airport that knows how to work with snow, it’s certainly MSP, but I was slightly concerned only because this trip involved me making a connection. When I fly on Delta, I just fly directly to London, but one of the trade-offs of flying American was losing the direct option. For whatever reason, my connecting flight was in Charlotte, NC and I had just over two hours between flights, so I knew I had some cushion, which worked out well as I ended up needing that entire cushion when my flight (like many others on that day) got delayed. We only pushed back from the gate ~40 minutes late, but then we sat on the tarmac for awhile so we could get de-iced. I was getting slightly nervous, if I’m honest, but we ultimately landed over an hour before my London flight left…and then couldn’t get off the plane because the jet bridge driver couldn’t get the jet bridge attached! Lots of us on the flight had connections to make (in fact, I think I heard one passenger say that the delay had already caused him to miss his connection), so we were anxious to get off, which we eventually did and since Charlotte’s airport isn’t big, I just had to walk a couple of minutes to my new gate. I had time to stop by the bathroom and then right as I got to my gate, the gate agent called the first zone for boarding. So it actually worked out fine! I was only slightly nervous about my checked bag also making the connection, but I was able to watch it in the American app and I could see it had been loaded on my new flight by the time I boarded, so I was happy.

So how about the actual flight? Well, flights. I was a little apprehensive about “cheating” on Delta since I’ve always really enjoyed flying with them (and I always know what I’m going to get). Unsurprisingly, using such a small amount of miles for this trip meant that I had regular economy seats, but I was able to use the rest of my miles and some cash to upgrade myself to Main Cabin Extra on all four flights. I found it to be very comparable to Comfort+ on Delta, with the only difference probably being the lack of a seatback monitor on my flight to Charlotte (I knew that would be the case, so I had stuff downloaded to watch on my iPad). I didn’t have anyone next to me on either flight nor did I have someone in front of me leaning their seat into my face. 🙂 I did watch a movie on the flight to London, but was definitely drifting off (that flight left just after midnight Charlotte time, so late for me!), so I decided to use my new travel pillow (thanks Scott!) to try and get some sleep. As you may remember, I’m awful at sleeping on planes, but I do think the travel pillow helped as I definitely got SOME rest. I certainly didn’t sleep the whole time nor did I get very deep sleep, but I’ll take what I can get! It was at least enough that I didn’t feel like a zombie when when we landed in London (just about on time, too).

Check out a few “getting there” photos below.

I’ve used this lounge once before, but it was several years ago. The food selection and comfort isn’t quite on par with most Delta lounges, but it was still nice! I had a nice, quiet seat, a little snack, and a drink, so I was happy.

What I was LESS happy with was this view outside the lounge windows (left) and of my own plane (right), thanks to the snow. Just glad I made it to London with no issues!

The leg room on my flight to London didn’t feel quite as generous, but at least I had a seatback monitor. Though that remote you can see in the left photo? Yeah, I couldn’t use that because the button to pop it out of the seatback didn’t work. Thankfully I could use on-screen controls instead!

Not much to see for the food on the plane, but it was okay! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to eat dinner (since it was the middle of the night for my body), but I hadn’t had a meal since lunch (I only had some chips and salsa in the lounge at MSP), so I was hungry enough. The yoghurt with granola was actually perfect for a bit of energy right before we landed, too!

Since I actually did get some rest, the flight to London felt pretty quick! Once I deplaned, it was easy to go into autopilot to get to passport control and then to baggage claim. As usual, passport control was SO fast! There was no line, so I just had to walk up, scan my passport, look into a camera, and then walk through. Truly the easiest! And as with my last couple of trips, I got to baggage claim before bags had even started coming down and when they DID start coming down, mine was one of the first dozen out. All in all, it was a really easy travel process, from check-in all the way to getting my bag at Heathrow. Thank you, travel gods!

With bag in hand, I decided to deviate slightly from my normal pattern of taking the tube into the city and instead took the relatively new Elizabeth line. At just over £13, it’s more expensive (and faster) than the tube (that’s just over £3), but far less expensive than the Heathrow Express, which is faster still, but costs at least £25. None of those prices are dealbreakers, but I figured it was worth trying the new line to see how well it worked. Happily, it worked fine, so I’ll likely use it in the future. And it was pretty easy to get to the nearest station to my hotel. Speaking of which…

In a very unsurprising turn of events, I booked another hub by Premier Inn to stay in, though this time it’s a new-to-me location in Shoreditch. It’s right by Brick Lane, which I’ve only been to once, on my 2019 trip, so I didn’t know the area well, but it’s been nice so far! The room is predictably laid out and has been comfortable, plus it has all the hallmarks I look for – strong wifi, comfortable bed, AC, and good water pressure. My friend Matt from Brighton is staying in the hotel as well for a few days, but he hadn’t yet arrived when I did, so I had time to unpack, run to a nearby market for some water and snacks, and take a shower to wash off that post-travel grime. Hooray! You can see a few pictures of the hotel below.

My compact room looked just as I expected and, having slept here for one night already, I can confirm its comfort. 🙂

By the time Matt got here, we were both ready to grab some food and I suggested Indian, as my friend Felicity reminded me that when she and I were here with friends in September, we never had an Indian meal as we’d talked about! Luckily for us, Brick Lane is chock full of Indian restaurants, so we just walked around until we saw one that looked good. Taste of Jaipur fit that bill – the food was really tasty! I had a delicious butter chicken that was really rich, along with some very tasty naan. It was so tasty that I didn’t even take a photo of it! I would definitely go back, but there’s so many other Indian places in the neighborhood that I could try lots of others before circling back to this one.

Without anything else planned, we walked around a bit after dinner before heading to the always-fun Retro Bar for a drink. Yes yes, I do go there every time I come to London, usually more than once. What can I say? I like the vibe. 🙂 It was actually quite busy though, so we had to stand around for a bit before a table opened up. As we were catching up, a couple of people asked if they could sit in the two empty chairs as there were no other tables opened, so we ended up talking to them for a bit. They complimented my accent, so that’s always nice. 😀

It was nice to catch up at the bar, but we called it a relatively early night and were back at the hotel by 9 PM. I didn’t get this post finished, so it’s now the second night of this trip as I hit publish. It was another good day today, spent mostly catching up with other friends, plus seeing a show in the evening. More on that soon!