Welcome to London
- Kara Monroe
- Jun 4
- 8 min read
Monday April 7, 2025
Arrival at Heathrow
It's Kara back to start us off again today - fitting since I woke up first. I slept lightly on the plane, but enough that I felt pretty rested. I woke up just as one of the crew was coming around with hot towels. He took my breakfast order. Just as I got my seat put back up, he arrived with my coffee, orange juice and breakfast tray. I opted for the sous vide egg bites with the roasted tomato sauce. There was also some fresh fruit and yogurt. The roasted tomato sauce was actually quite tasty. It reminded me of a smoked ketchup that they had at a since-closed restaurant in Indy. The rest of the meal was so so, but I might have found a reason to get a smoke gun for the kitchen!
When I woke we were about an hour and 20 minutes out from Heathrow. I peaked over my seat several times and saw that Gayle was still snoozin’. Important Pro Tip - Never wake a sleeping Gayle. She roused about 20 minutes before landing and happily had slept quite well. She did miss breakfast service so we can’t report on whether or not the banana bread pudding was as good as the last time she had it.
Gayle: The positive: I slept for roughly 6.5hrs, a new record best for me during a flight! The negative: I was really looking forward to the banana bread pudding for breakfast! I barely had time to get my bearings and store all my stuff before we landed. Wow! Best international arrival ever!
Kara: We were on the ground at Heathrow just a few minutes early, headed to our gate, deplaned and followed the signs to the UK Border. I wanted to take a picture of the big sign that says UK Border, but Gayle said I might get arrested. Instead, we headed through the E-gate line. While this meant no passport stamp, it also meant incredibly expedited service. We both also remarked at how absolutely quiet it is as you go through customs in the UK…the complete opposite of the horrible cacophony that will greet us when we return and go through US Customs in Chicago.
We proceeded to baggage claim and grabbed our bags and then went to meet our driver with Blacklane car service, Diana-Mariana. We’ve used a number of different modes of travel in different cities. We have done the arrival by Tube in London as well. However, for this trip, Gayle opted to try out something that she might want to recommend to travel clients - a service called Blacklane. Blacklane is a luxury car for hire service available in metropolitan cities around the world. Think about the suit wearing driver standing at the bottom of the escalator with the sign with your name on it - that’s Blacklane. Diana-Marianna took our bags and we proceeded through the car park to a Mercedes van (due to our large luggage).
Diana-Marianna silently navigated the streets of London like a pro. She told us she was a lorry (aka truck) driver for many years. After about an hour (with provided chilled water), we arrived at our hotel - the St. Pancras Renaissance London.
Our Hotel
We booked the St. Pancras Renaissance on points for this trip. We booked a Barlow House tower room with two twin beds in it. Gayle is masterful at watching the points/cost of all things trip-associated, and so we originally booked it for 294,000 points. Gayle alerted me to call several times when the price went down, so that ultimately we got the four night booking for 258,000 points! On top of that, when we checked in via the app before we left home, we saw that we’d been upgraded to a Chambers Suite. The Chambers Wing also includes lounge access throughout the trip.
We were met at our car by the hotel concierge and a bellman. They grabbed our bags and the concierge escorted us to check in. Our room was ready (at 1:30pm), so our bellman escorted us to our room and dropped our bags.
We are in room 175 which has a small sitting area as well as a bedroom and bathroom. The ceilings are probably 20 feet tall! We look out onto the Eurostar platforms at St. Pancras international. The room isn’t perfect. The sitting area is DARK! It needs at least one more lamp - to the point that we’re not using it that much.
We decided to check out the Chambers Club (Lounge) on our way out of the hotel to explore a bit. A nice hotel staff person greeted us and shared the schedule of food, drinks, and snacks available throughout the day.
Gayle: While a separate full review of the hotel will be forthcoming, I’ll share a bit here. If you’re looking for a key hub for all types of transportation (like us for this trip), this is your spot. The Chambers Club lounge is a real benefit for us in providing some morning sustenance and evening snacks, but is technically not a Marriott Executive Club. We had to sacrifice two separate beds, so we created the cliche “blanket barrier” down the middle of the king bed. If you are into historic buildings this is your place. Sadly, it’s not our preferred choice in lodging, so the lack of outlets & light, slow heating water in the sink, a non-functioning single US outlet, thin windows, lack of light due to looking out to the train station, and a barely suitable A/C haven’t won us over.
Shopping…London Style
Kara: We hadn’t really made plans for today but decided since we arrived early and pretty rested, we would enjoy the beautiful sunny day and head out to check a few things off of the very overcrowded day I built out for us tomorrow.
NOTE: Usually Gayle is the planner extraordinaire for all trips. However, I really wanted to be able to be in the moment and enjoy everything around me. To do that, I need to prepare. So, I built a day by day travel guide for us - that ended up being 82 pages long. I’ve linked a slightly slimmed down version here (that takes out personal info) if you want to see it. If you’re adventurous enough to actually look at it - you may note that we often change plans (which is the whole reason you make plans in the first place - so that you can knowingly change them!)
Gayle: Note the Travel Guides I make for my travel clients are usually only 10-20 pages! I was stunned by the overwhelming effort Kara put into this (while I focused on my travel clients!)
Kara: We first tried to go to a local pub - the Skinner’s Arms - for some lunch/dinner. Since G missed breakfast, she definitely needed to eat. It was also late enough in the day that this would probably serve as our main meal for the day. We proceeded to the Skinner’s Arms, took a seat, and then went to the bar to order …only to learn that the kitchen was closed.
Never fear, the travel guide had a second option for us which was the Euston Flyer - also a local pub. Thankfully, their kitchen was open so we ordered the traditional British meal of fish and chips! It was quite tasty. Normally, this dish comes with “mushy peas”. The Euston Flyer version was served with delicious fresh peas. Yum!
Fully fueled up, we took the tube toward Oxford Street and the Disney Store London. (Yes, of course we went to Disney first!) We set up our phones so that we could use them for transit (mine was already set that way from New York City back at Christmas). It was just as easy as in NYC to tap our phone against the entrance gate and head on through. This is the least expensive way to ride as well. The system keeps track of your rides throughout the day and then charges you once a day based on use. No having to top off Oyster cards or figure out which fare you need or anything.
We browsed through the Disney Store. They had some cute king Mickey dolls, but nothing that truly caught our fancy. The Marvel display upstairs was also not as exciting as we had hoped. I am a bit surprised Gayle did not buy the blue Stark Industries sweatshirt though.
As we strolled along the street, we also took in Primark, browsed in the window at the Build a Bear, which featured Paddington Bears as well as King’s Guard Bears. Very cute. As I’m always on the lookout for a piece of jewelry on our trips - and Gayle loves Swarovski - we browsed through Pandora and Swarovski. Finally, we strolled through the food hall at Selfridges. We almost caved at a sweet treat shop in Selridges, but decided it would be too challenging to get back to the hotel. (Gayle: FYI many documentaries highlight this historic store and I believe I streamed one of them, on my prior visit!)
Then, it was off to our fave: LEGO Store London. For this, we used a bus - which thanks to tap to pay was also super easy! (Gayle: This was my first public transit bus in London ever. It’s ease and efficiency made me an immediate fan.)
We arrived at the LEGO store which, of course, had about a 15 minute line around the building to get in. This is quite common in many cities. Thankfully, even though it did take 15 minutes, the line did move regularly so it didn’t feel that long. The biggest feature of the London store is the replica of Big Ben. There is also a 007 car and, on the second floor, some Harry Potter builds. It was also on the second floor where we made our custom mini figs!
We’ve come to enjoy making custom Mini Figures at LEGO stores around the world because you can customize them with something specific to that location. They are a cheap and small souvenir that always makes us smile. Sadly, unlike in Copenhagen, we didn’t also find that we could make a custom set of three mini figs (the non printed version) that were also clearly related to London. Our sets from Copenhagen are still one of my favorite souvenirs ever.
Dinner at the Club
We hopped on the Tube and headed back to the hotel. Since our hotel is attached to St. Pancras station we have easy access to that station, which has a wide array of shopping and dining. (Gayle: This is something I highly value, as I dislike wasting vacation time trying to find suitable food.) After having to ask a helpful security/police officer for directions once, we came into the hotel via the restaurant entrance off of the platform level of the station (one level below what we can see from our rooms). We headed into the Chamber Club from the entry at the back of the restaurant and helped ourselves to some light snacks and topped off with plenty of water for the evening.
By this time, I was dragging as I didn’t sleep as much on the plane as Gayle did so we headed to our room and started to settle in for the night, including calling my dad (and Kona) back in Indiana.
Next up… Westminster Abbey and a Spin on Your Own Chocolate & Book Tour!
On that note… Disclaimer: I (Gayle) am a travel agent with Authorized Disney Travel Planner agency - Off to Neverland Travel. Contact me today for a no-obligation quote!
As to Disney artwork, logos, and properties: ©Disney | Ship Registry: The Bahamas | CST# 2090317-40 / Fla. Seller of Travel Ref. No. ST37203
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