UK 2026: Planes, Trains and shoes

Good day, I say! Yesterday we left Canada and early this morning we arrived in London. I failed to sleep on the flight. Mrs Milddogs believes she got almost 3 minutes of sleep. Flight was uneventful. I enjoyed two complimentary Coors Light during the flight.

Our hotel in the Leicester Square area has an early check in option (subject to availability). So after our 1 hour trip on the Piccadilly Line we arrived at the hotel around 08:00. Bad news, no rooms available for early check in for us. “When can we have the room?” “Oh, it will probably not be ready until 3:00”. Well poop, no early check in for us. But we could check the bags whilst we wandered around London for 7 or so hours. That was helpful as we saw many people slugging their suitcases around the streets.

We wandered through Trafalgar Square, amazing how close it is. We enjoyed the statues and the view of Big Ben. We headed down The Mall to Buckingham Palace and enjoyed seeing that IRL. Surprisingly, King Charles did not invite us in for tea.

We enjoyed some time in St James park whilst we observed the fellow park attendees watch the few resident squirrels with great interest. Just days ago I was chasing a squirrel out of the pool shed and Mrs Milddogs counted 9 on our patio at one time. We failed to fall asleep on the provided park benches. The police also did not arrest us for vagrancy.

We wandered through Leicester Square, Piccadilly Square and parts between and adjacent. Must admit, it was long day of walking to sightsee on no sleep.

The London we have seen so far is amazing in its history. The old buildings are fascinating. We ate our first meal of the day (lunch at our normal breakfast time) at a Pub called the Bear and Staff. It has been open since 1724. We had Steak and Ale pie as we stared at the beauty of the vape and souvenir shops nearby. I doubt they have been open since 1724.

Rewind a bit. At the Ottawa Airport, Mrs Milddogs and I wiled away the pre-boarding hours in the “Aspire” lounge. It’s a perk from one of our credit cards. I would rate everything in this experience as pretty good. However, the washroom is really bad. Best to leave the lounge and head to the communal washrooms.

We got our hotel room around 2:45. That’s fifteen minutes early. Big win! A slight rest off of feet was enjoyed by all, including those people on the street below that can more or less see right into the room. Slightly strange twist in our hotel room, we got an accessible room which means, amongst other things, the sliding bathroom doors don’t fully closed. They aren’t broken, they don’t close so as to not interfere with the lifter track on the ceiling. Mrs Milddogs designed a bodge using a coat hangar, laundry and clothes pins to afford us slightly more privacy.

One perk of our hotel room is that we get free food and beverages at the in-house cafe. This may constitute dinner tonight.

We would like to thank the weather office as it was beautiful today. 20 C and sunny. I may even have an English sunburn.

It’s cool how much you can see here with relatively short walks. Oh, they don’t always feel short, but they are.

We went to the hotel cafe to have some snacks for dinner. Throw in a free Jack and Pepsi and some Prosecco and all of a sudden we got all psyched up to head out on foot again to take in the sights, sounds and smells of Chinatown. We had a lovely walk amongst the crowds that were about 78,734 times more substantial than those of earlier today. We picked up a few snacks for later but did not get one of the Nutella filled fish. We are now truly exhausted.

Tomorrow we may do a hop on hop off bus tour. My knee might need a break.