Serendipity – a day out in London COMPLETED About This Page:

[chezp]

Serendipity – a day out in London

Pre-trip report: we weren’t even planning this a couple of months ago…

Well, first I guess I should start with the reason for this trip report title. Serendipity is essentially a happy accident, and that’s really how this trip started out. A couple of months ago, we weren’t planning on going up to London at all on this day. I was planning on being in London for the next day for a course I really wanted to do for work, but that was it.

Then I got an email saying that Kylie Minogue, a famous actress and singer, who you may have heard of (if not, I’ll give more information on her later on… ) would be playing concerts in London. Sadly, they weren’t at a weekend, which wasn’t great, as trying to go up to London for a concert midweek isn’t great for us. It’s about an hour’s drive to get to the venue, and you usually have to leave work early to get there, and then of course you end up getting home late as well – not great. Well, I had a look at the dates, and realised that one of them was for 30 September, when I’d be in London the next day… hmmm…. Maybe!

I was about to purchase tickets, having found some in a block that was quite near to the stage, then I thought about it and figured I’d wait until that evening when Mark was home, as he could get the tickets for me for an early birthday present! I’m a great believer in fate, and that if something is meant to be, then it will happen, and I took that approach with this. I figured if the decent seats were still available in the evening, we were meant to go – and they were! Armed with Mark’s credit card, the purchase was quickly made…

I said to Mark that I’d book a hotel for the night, as I’d be in London the next day. At that stage, I hadn’t got much further than that. I figured he’d go into work albeit a little bit later than usual, but he decided to have the next day off, while I was on my course. I found a hotel that had good ratings, and was very well priced, the Express by Holiday Inn at the Royal Docklands. It was one Tube stop away from the O2 arena, meaning it would be a short hop from the concert, and the hotel was only then a couple of minutes’ walk from the Tube station. Even better, parking was very reasonably priced - £10 for the night. Result! That booked, we were sorted…

We then started to talk about it, and chucked the idea around about us possibly taking the day of the concert off work. We both had a lot of leave still to use up because, although we’ve had lots of breaks, the majority of them have been very short getaways, generally just a weekend. We’ve literally had four days off for our trip around southern England in May, two weeks for our Med cruise on the Magic and our Italy road trip and we have another three days booked for our long break to Disneyland Paris in November, and that’s it, so heck, why not use up another day?!

Now what to do in that day? Well, we’d talked a lot about going up the Shard, which is London’s tallest building. I’ve heard good things about the view from there from friends, and it’s somewhere I’ve seen a lot of, as every time I go up to our work headquarters, I can clearly see it, so why not finally give it a go? The bonus is if you book online in advance, they give you a guarantee that if you have a day of poor visibility, you can get another day to try again within a three month period, which is good, as I’ve often seen it in cloud. Hopefully that won’t happen to us…

There were two other things we wanted to do on this day. We both wanted to see the sea of poppies being created at the Tower of London to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, as we guessed by now, it would be pretty spectacular. I was also keen on trying to get to the British Museum, as now we’d been to Athens, I wanted to see their bits of the Parthenon frieze that were located here, having seen the other bits in the New Acropolis Museum. It was an ambitious itinerary, but then again, for those of you who’ve read my previous trip reports, I doubt that will surprise you, as I am sort of known for that…

Next: where has all this traffic come from?

[Thomhazel]

Ooh cool I'm missing London so now I can live Vicariously through you.

[Colexis Mom]

Great start!

[shazza]

Sounds interesting!

[lauriep]

Looking forward to it!

[Shawnam1868]

Great start! I love Kylie Minogue, so I can't wait to hear your review.

[manticorjenn]

Sounds like another perfect day. Can't wait to read more.

[Cam22]

I can't wait to learn more and see more about London!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Shawnam1868

Great start! I love Kylie Minogue, so I can't wait to hear your review.

Oh cool! I wasn't sure if people would know who she is... you'll love the photos I got of her!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Cam22

I can't wait to learn more and see more about London!

It might give you more ideas for a trip over here!

[KMB733]

Great Start!! I can't wait to read more about your day our in London!!

[chezp]

Tuesday 30 September – part one: where has all this traffic come from?

We set off from home just after 9:15am, and had a good run at first, all the way up to the outskirts of London… then we slowed down… and then we stopped… went a bit… stopped again… went a bit… stopped again. You get the picture! There was nothing showing on our sat nav (GPS to you guys) and the radio didn’t say there were any problems in this area, but something certainly wasn’t right. We joined the inside lane of traffic, as it seemed to be moving faster, and the reason why soon became clear, because of the amount of traffic heading off the slip road… we decided that would be the best course of action.

We moved quite well for about half a mile, then we crawled, then we stopped… went a bit… stopped again… went a bit… yep, exactly the same thing! This was getting stupid, and the clock was ticking. Usually it wouldn’t matter, but the Shard has timed tickets, and ours were for 11:00am – 11:30am, and the sat nav was now telling us that we wouldn’t be at our hotel until well after 10:30am, and we still had to get to the Shard. We tried to programme it to find parking near the Shard, but that would’ve meant going into the congestion charge zone and paying for that, so maybe not. I programmed it for Tower Bridge, as that would be the bridge we’d take, and no congestion charge there. Phew!

We carried on plodding our way painfully along the road, stopping, moving a bit, stopping again etc., as the time ticked on and on. In the end, we decided to hang a right and try and head back towards our original road, as the roads that way now seemed to be clear. We kept going, with the traffic going the other way, which is always a good sign. Soon enough we were back on the original road, and we could only imagine the problem was now behind us, perhaps an accident, as although there was traffic, it was nothing worse than we’d usually expect around here.

Now when we’d started, we’d been due to reach the hotel at 10:05am. We finally got there at more like 10:45am, and I think we were both very relieved to see it. We parked up, and headed inside to see if there was a room ready or not, as otherwise we’d leave everything in the car. We were greeted by the sound of the fire alarm going off, which was fine, as it was their six monthly check, and heck, it’s important to do, right?

Try telling that to the guy in reception, who was completely and utterly furious about the whole thing. Goodness knows why, as by now, everyone must either be checking out or in. He turned around to us and said “don’t stay here, listen to that!” and Mark and I just looked at each other. He was a very weird character, and I was glad when he disappeared, as apparently the manager told us she was about to call security and get him thrown out, he’d been getting so aggressive with staff about it.

There was a room available, so we grabbed everything from the car, threw it in the room (no photos, as we were in such a rush ) and headed downstairs. I did at least have a chance to grab a couple of photos of the reception and lounge area…



We then headed out and across to the Tube station. Fortunately, we’d driven past it on the way here, so we knew where it was. It was literally a couple of minutes’ walk away, and you walk through the bus station, certainly from the direction we were coming anyway to get to the Tube station, which made a lot of sense to have everything combined together.

We got a Tube, and it didn’t take long at all to get to London Bridge station. I knew, from previous visits to this part of London, that the Shard is literally on top of the station, and we quickly found signs to it.

We headed inside, and we were literally the only people arriving at that point. I bet it’s very different on weekends and in the summer. We went through security, which was airport style, then had our photos taken with a green background. I was intrigued to see what they did with it, and if it was a nice photo, I had every intention of perhaps getting one…

The images in this area were a bit surreal. I did joke that maybe that’s what you see from the top of the Shard… then again, looking at some of these images, I hope not…



We headed towards the first lift, as you have to take two to get up to the viewing platform.



Now I didn’t get many photos in the first lift, as I wasn’t expecting to be blown away so much by it, but hopefully in these shots you can see that there are images projected on to the ceiling of the lift that you can watch as you make your way up.



The lift did literally grind to a halt at floor 33, and I felt a bit unsteady when I came out, but that was the only issue I had. We headed into the next one that would take us up to floor 68, and off we went. This time, I was prepared and ready to take photos of the images on the ceiling.



This lift was much smoother, and before we knew it, we’d arrived. Now floor 68 has a small shop (the full size one is back on the ground floor) and also some toilets, but we’ll come to those in due course. To reach the viewing platform, you have to head up a flight of stairs (or take a lift if you can’t manage them) to floor 69. This is the “indoor” platform. You’ll understand why I put it in inverted commas in due course.

Next: what views!

[Colexis Mom]

Sorry for all the traffic on your way in!

[KMB733]

Sorry about the traffic on your way into London!

[Cam22]

That traffic sounds totally ridiculous! Glad you all made it in time to even get your suitcases to the room. The Shard is definitely somewhere Luke would want to visit on a London trip.