Sept. 6th – Arrival Day.
We’ve not done so badly at the end of our first day. With the help of friendly locals, we’re actually found a nice pub, eaten too good meals, and dealt with the confusing, crowded maze of corridors and transportation options on arrival at Heathrow and then Paddington Station. The hotel is a bit of a let-down — the rooms are tiny, but they’ve been updated to a pretty high standard. Breakfast tomorrow will be the test. At least the place has a lift (elevator!).
We Needed Somewhere to Be For A While
When we arrived, we eventually found our way… after struggling with crowds and ATMs to the new Heathrow Express direct rail link to Paddington. That was worth the extra cost – at least I’d been able to set up travel agent discounts for the transfers and Britrail. In a moment of travel panic, I had left the emails with the directions for finding the hotel at home, but remembered enough and had the street address at least — so we walked the whole 5 minutes with our new rolly-bags clu-clunking along behind us. It’s not the most charming part of the Hyde Park district, but it has its points.
The room wasn’t ready, so we asked about a nearby pub. To our surprise and relief, we ended up in a grubby but friendly and authentic neighborhood local, and the barman directed us upstairs to a quiet wood-panelled clubroom with 2 perfect green leather club chairs. I had a Fuller’s Honey Dew ale and David had a cider, and both drinks were delicious and cool on a hard, hot day.
We almost fell asleep in those chairs. We eventually had a snack downstairs and listened to the locals joke with each other.
After a short break back at the hotel, we faced a whole afternoon to fill in with experiences. So we wandered off in the direction of the district’s namesake Hyde Park. Several riders on horseback clopped slowly along after their morning ride, taking their mounts into one of the many “mews” areas that are still used for stabling horses.
The park was hot, dusty, and suffering from the drought, so we ended up on the
“hop on, hop off” tour bus for about 2-3 hours – long enough to see everything, not long enough to actually hop off (too tired, anyway).
So now all we need to do is get going on the Tube tomorrow, and probably go to Greenwich and get out of the most congested parts of London. Tomorrow night we’ll have dinner with an internet acquaintance of David’s .
With luck, we’ll be able to book at least one show — I think David wants to see a show at the Globe, and so do I. If we do, we’ll probably make a day of it and ride the London Eye and walk the footbridge and the whole bit.
Dinner was at a delightful Indian restaurant — Indus Delta.
Afterwords: January 25th, 2004
We were so wiped out from the flight and the stress of Departure Day that when we ventured out in the direction of Hyde Park, we just walked along without taking a single picture. In fact, we emulated the ladies in “Room With A View” and simply drifted. I knew we’d find a bunch of tour buses if we made for the Hyde Park Corner/Marble Arch area, so eventually we climbed aboard the typical doubledecker tour bus packed with tourists. Eh, we could have done worse. David was close to needing a full system shutdown and hard reboot, but we were more or less committed to the loop once we boarded, and neither of us could think our way out of a paper bag at that point, much less figure out where to “hop off” and “hop on” a bus headed back in the direction of the hotel.
I remember seeing a lot of architectural details from the top of the bus. I think David remembers a headache. Fortunately, we had chosen a tour line that had a “hop-off” stop right by our hotel (we knew it was there, but chose to walk to the park first) and so tourism that day was akin to being couch potatoes, except that the couch was diesel and had a second floor.
We cast about helplessly trying to decide where to have dinner, and unfortunately missed out on a charming pub called “The Archers” near the hotel (it was down a tiny side street, who knew?) and found the Indus Delta on Praed Street near Paddington. They’re often running discounts and promotions, but otherwise it’s a white-tablecloth Indian restaurant with helpful staff and a nice ambiance. When I was looking for a suitable link to the restaurant I considered adding this 2 year-old entry from the Newspad site:
Local Indian restaurant, Indus Delta at 135 Praed Street is offering a 15% discount to Newspad readers on an a la carte meal at lunchtime or in the evening. Just bring in a copy of this email or book in advance (tel 020 7723 3191) quoting the ‘Newspad’ offer. Opening hours 12am – 12pm.
Don’t know if the discount is still running (there’s one for nurses who work at St Mary’s Hospital, too) but the hours are convenient if you’re on the night shift (I’m sure it’s a typo, they’re open from noon to midnight really).
Dinner was so good, it was a physical relief, and we enjoyed every bite. I think we just ordered the typical “variety” or “combination” dinner with all the food in little metal dishes, and condiments on the side.
I think if we’d had a bad meal to start, it would have messed with our mood. It felt like London had welcomed us, rather than rejecting us and sending us packing with a sour stomach back to our tiny little room.
A few words about the hotel.
1. Yes, I know London hotel rooms are small. We had to shift luggage about in order to move around. That’s really small. But — we did have a queen bed, so mustn’t grumble (from Notes from a Small Island.
2. The phone by the bed was merely an intercom. Not only was it no good for outgoing calls, it would not accept an incoming call transferred from the front desk
3. However, it was clean and although the traffic noise from the street (how DO they run big diesel trucks up a tiny little street like Sussex Place?) bothered us, it was eventually quiet at night. And the location was really good. Next time, though, either a nicer small hotel on a non-traffic street, or a bit more of a full service hotel, such as one of the Thistles.
I ended up booking this hotel using London Town’s site, which turned out to be a great resource that I should have used more — like for booking theatre tickets and other activities. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. They still send me emails – a little followup is fine, guys, but we got home several months ago.
But then… airfare to London in the winter is cheap… maybe they’re not so dumb.