The answer is no. 🙂 Why ask the question though?? Because I’m in London – again! It’s Thursday morning and I arrived yesterday with my friend Bill, though we came a day earlier than expected, deciding just a few hours before a Tuesday night flight that we should fly that day rather than Wednesday. Why, you may ask? Well, we’re flying standby for this trip, which means we’re at the mercy of the seats the airline has available. While that already meant having flexibility about luggage (definitely carry-on only as you don’t want to check a bag for a flight you may not get on) and where to make potential flight connections, it also meant that when he called around 6 PM on Tuesday to ask if I wanted to fly that night, I knew I should say yes to guarantee we’d get here!

As always with standby, we knew we wouldn’t have a seat until we got to the gate, so after getting to the airport around 9 PM and enjoying an adult beverage near the gate, we headed over as boarding started and, before long, had our assigned seats…in row 54. 🙂 As I’ve said on this blog before, a seat is a seat as planes are ultimately a way to get us from one adventure to the next, so I didn’t mind my seat one bit. Is it really nice to have a great seat, even a fancy lay-flat one? Of course it is! But does an aisle seat at the back of the plane get you to that next adventure just as easily? Absolutely. 🙂 We were across the aisle from each other and Bill even lucked out in having no one next to him (well, there was, but he moved to the open seat in front of me). The flight was uneventful and I, as usual, got no sleep, but I did watch a couple of movies and tried to rest intermittently. Bill also didn’t sleep much, so we were nice and tired when we arrived. But the important is, we arrived in London, safe and sound!

We took the Elizabeth line to reach our hotel. Don’t we look refreshed after our flight?? 🙂

As first days go, you may not be surprised to learn that this one was pretty low-key, mostly because we were never planning on being here on Wednesday. While at the airport, we had confirmed our hotel plans (had to add an extra night to what we’d already planned), with both of us getting a room at the Moxy London Excel. That’s the hotel Bill is staying at on this trip anyway, so he just extended his rezzie, while I used some Marriott points to book my own night (more on my other hotel later, but I didn’t see a room there for Wednesday night, so couldn’t extend my stay). While we both agree the hotel is further out from the city than we would normally prefer, it’s perfectly nice and, now that I’m getting ready to check out, I can confirm I had a very nice night’s sleep there. And as a bonus, it reminds us both of the one other time we were out here to attend the Doctor Who 50th anniversary celebration at the Excel in 2013 (can’t believe that was 12 years ago!).

I’ve never stayed at a Moxy before, but I’ve heard of the brand, which is part of Marriott, and they seem to skew more urban/young/fun (as much as a hotel brand can do that, at least). The staff were all super nice and helpful, the room is nice (and has AC, which is a must for me!), the bed is comfortable, and the bathroom is small, but functional (not great water pressure, but definitely not the worst I’ve experienced either). Although Bill will be here for the rest of the trip, I’m packed and ready to migrate to my “permanent” hotel, but I enjoyed my short time here!

All the games make the place feel more young and chill.

Looking into the room, plus the bed itself. Nice and comfortable!

It will come as no surprise to learn that we were both SO excited to grab a shower (it’s very satisfying to wash off that post-travel grime), but decided against any kind of nap-taking as it didn’t feel wise, despite how tired we were. It was around 3:30 by this time and neither of us wanted to end up sleeping all evening and then being awake all night or something. So we rallied, showered, did some unpacking, and then made our way into London proper. The nearest station here is actually a DLR stop and it’s just a few minutes down the street, so we were able to easily take that a few stops and change to the tube proper to get into the city. With no real plans, we went where we always (well, pretty often, at least) go, which is…Retro Bar! Yes, our favorite small gay bar is always guaranteed to offer a good drink and a nice atmosphere, so we started there. It was actually somewhat busy, with some open tables marked as reserved and the others filled with patrons, so the staff opened the upstairs, which I’ve only been to once before, in alllll my previous visits. It was nice to not have to stand around with our drinks like the tired zombies we felt like! We’ll certainly be back again at some point on this trip, so don’t be surprised when you read about Retro again!

The rest of our evening was, unsurprisingly, chill. The more we sat at the bar, the more tired we got, but we knew we needed to eat as we hadn’t done that since the little breakfast burrito we’d been given on the plane, shortly before landing. We thought a pub meal sounded good, so we walked towards Covent Garden and found one that looked decent. My sleep-addled brain didn’t even remind me to grab photos of the pub or the meal, but both were nice! Like many pubs that serve food, they had a separate dining area upstairs from the pub proper, which was nice in this case as the pub was really busy, but we were able to get food right away upstairs.

A decent meal, a drink (or two), and some walking around had us totally tuckered out, so we made our way back to the Moxy after eating. It takes just under an hour to get back here from where we were in London, so it was a battle to stay awake on the train, but we managed it. I didn’t even have the energy to do any blogging after we got back, which is why I’m doing it now! I was in bed around 9:15 and didn’t REALLY get up until about 8:45 today, which was just bliss. I did wake up a couple times, around 5 and 7 AM, but I certainly wasn’t going to be properly awake then. I’m feeling refreshed and mostly normal now and have packed up my room to head out shortly. Now I just need Bill to wake up, too! 🙂

Onwards to another fun London adventure!