London

We went on a trip to Bergen, Norway for 10 days in July, doing a few days in London and Helsinki in between to catch up with friends.

Delta One Lounge 

Before the flight, we visited the Delta One Lounge, which was again very nice. They are unique in that they have a “wellness room” with six very fancy massage chairs. The entire chair lifts up from the ground, reclines, and squeezes your back, arms and legs simultaneously. It’s nice, but I wish it spent less time on calves and more on the back. Isn’t back pain the main reason people usually get massages? After the first session, the operator offered Christine and me a second consecutive session, as there weren’t many gurests. When I expressed my request to focus more on the back, the operator went over the chair’s massage modes. It seems to have 3 main modes and each mode branches off into 5 sub-modes, with esoteric names like “sport stretch”. Interesting because the operator usually only offer us with a choice of 2-3 modalities, but the machine seems to have way more options than that. (Not sure if the options are that different from each other though). Then we had dinner – I got a lamb pasta and Christine had a steak dish. After a quick shower, we boarded.

Flight to London

We flew with Virgin Atlantic on the Airbus 350-1000 which has the newer reverse herringbone seats. While these seats were more comfortable than the older fold-down seats on the VS Boeing 787-900 from our South Africa trip, they felt narrow and cramped, especially when compared to other seats like Air France’s older 777-300ER layout. When sleeping on my right side, I found it difficult to comfortably position my arm due to the storage space. On the left side, the armrest could be lowered, but then my arm would just hang, as there wasn’t enough space in the seat for a straight lying down position, making it uncomfortable. Unlike the B789 though, at least I could recline the seat here – so it’s definitely much better than an economy seat.

After we boarded, our flight was delayed by almost 5 hours due to some problem. It sounded like something related to revised weight and certification. We took off at midnight. This made it difficult to rest, as I tried to stay awake until takeoff for dinner but was too tired. As we were sitting there, we also thought that it must be particularly painful for people sitting in economy.

We arrived about 4 hours later than originally scheduled. Later I tried to get UK261 compensation for the 4 hour delay, and Virgin kept denying it, until they admitted to being 3h57m late, not “4 hour”. (For under 4 hours, the comp is 700 GBP, but over 4 hours it’s double that.)

We arrived in London at 6:30 PM. After catching up with Kenny on the subway, we got lost at Paddington Station trying to transfer to the District Line. The signage inside the station disappeared at some point, and we ended up on the surface level. We decided to take a bus instead. For some reason, Google Maps public transit directions was showing both the bus ride and subway option to both equally take about 30 minutes. Later I re-checked and it seemed like it should have been 5 minutes. I don’t know why it was acting up.

Doubletree Hotel Victoria Station

London was very hot and humid this weekend, around 80 degrees. Apparently London had been having a heatwave for a month. Up until the week before the trip, I was trying to decide between paying cash at the Victoria Station Doubletree (and offloading all my Hilton credits in this stay) and booking the Trafalgar St James with Hilton free night certs, but the second cert didn’t get issued on time and Hilton had a small cash rate sale in June and I ended up booking the Doubletree.  It was $570 USD for two nights and I managed to use up $100 in Hilton credits and $200 in Hilton gift cards from previous quarter credits. 

My plan was to use Q2 credits on the first day, then gift cards, and Q3 credits upon checkout on June 30th, hoping they would post by July 1st for Q3. This required careful timing with the cards, especially since we’ve had trouble using the gift cards in Mexico. 

We had a London departure flight at 9am from LGW and I was nervous about the early morning transport logistics. Victoria station (from which both the Gattwick Express and the Southern Railway depart) gave us more flexibility with the departure – especially because trying to use up the credits would likely eat up some of our check-out time right before the train. 

Unfortunately, they wouldn’t accept a pre-paymemt towards our folio during check-in. So we would be unable to use one of the two, either Q2 or Q3 credits, depending on when the check-out payment would post.

After checking in, we went to a nearby pub-style food hall and had Malaysian food for dinner. We had migoreng, roti, curry and chicken tenders and french fries. It felt very  expensive – a lot of meals were in the $20+ range. Then we walked it off around the neighborhood and went to sleep. The late arrival prevented us from doing our half day of traveling on Saturday. 

Borough Market

As usual, I woke up at 3am after sleeping only 4 hours, feeling some difficulty breathing with my sleep apnea. My rustling noises woke up Christine a few hours later as well. Originally, I was planning to have breakfast at 7am, go to church service at 8am at a nearby anglican church, and then go meet with Kenny & Jessi at 10:30am. We went for breakfast, a bit weary about saving stomach space for Borough Market later… and as expected, we ended up eating a bit too much. Then food coma hit us and we just slept in until 10.

At Borough Market, we walked across booths selling all kinds of good looking foods. Christine had been hyping herself up for months looking at Facebook reels of various food stands in this market. But we were unfortunately too full to sample them. We had a grilled sausage roll from Ginger Pig.. and that was it. The sausage roll was fantastic. We also saw chocolate-covered strawberries and a giant seafood paella, as well as many Asian food options. Borough Market was very cosmopolitan. There was a southeast asian market selling edible insects. 

Christine observed that London’s food scene has become much more diverse since 2005, when it was mainly fish and chips, Indian food, oily Chinese food, and Sunday roasts. 

There were about 50 seats in the main seating area. As seating was limited, many people were sharing tables. We sat across from a couple, and the man was eating the hyped parmesan pork sandwich. He said his sandwich was good but felt it was overhyped. We asked another family about their seafood paella, and they said it was alright but messy to eat. There were some birds were flying around, trying to snatch food from people and getting boldly close to people.

We then walked from Borough Market through Tower Bridge to Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Our goal was to join the 3pm Evensong Service.

We visited the Southwark Cathedral. Kenny pointed us at a section with an archeological cutout where they lay bare the layers of construction as they layered on top of one another through Roman, medieval and modern times. It’s stunning how much can lay underneath as time passes by. It was maybe 10+ feet deep? The Cathedral was also stunning. I enjoyed looking up at the intricate details of the construction. After he noticed that I enjoy looking at buildings, he proposed a couple more cathedrals and historical sites to visit. He had a whole Google Maps layer saved on his phone on touristic attractions in London. We went to a cathedral that had been bombed during World War II and had lost its roofing, and was kept purposefully in that state. The place was beautifully covered in vegetation.

Later, we visited St. Paul’s, a huge church that fits thousands of people. We tried to participate in the service, but the liturgy was long, and the singing was beautiful but the words were unintelligible. After about half an hour, we left as we were getting hungry. We decided to have Sunday roast earlier than Kenny’s original 6 PM reservation, opting for a nearby pub where we had Sunday roast and Scotch eggs. We chatted, went back to the hotel for a nap, and then went out for dessert, having chicken and mushroom cider pie.

5am train to Gatwick

On Monday, we had an 8:45 AM Norwegian Airways flight from Gatwick Airport to Bergen. Choosing this flight was tricky as 8:45 AM was a bit too early to manage transportation to the airport; ideally, we would have preferred something around 11 AM or 12 PM. There were only two direct flights to Bergen from London: 8:45 AM or 9 PM. The other late morning options involving somewhat lengthy layovers, like 5+ hours stuck in Amsterdam. In retrospect, we should have taken the layover and avoid the stress of the early 9 AM flight.

Our hotel was right next to the train station, and the train ride was half an hour. We allotted a maximum of half an hour for this. This meant being ready by 4 AM, leaving the room at 4:30 AM, and heading to the train station by 4:50 AM, a three-minute walk.

We tried to go to bed by 11 PM but woke up around 1:30 or 2 AM, and Christine eventually woke up too. We couldn’t go back to sleep, so instead we discussed some changes to our New Zealand trip in December. We packed, dealt with the Hilton credits and gift cards, and were ready at 4:20am. So we took the 4:30am train instead of 5:00am (hadn’t booked the train in advance, just in case)

We arrived at the airport around 5:15 AM and went through security in about 15 minutes, although my backpack got stuck an extra 15 minutes for screening. We were through security and inside the airport by 5:40 AM, three hours before our 8:45 AM departure, which allowed for relaxation and eating. The security line was very busy with a large group of high school students. One of them told us that they were in a Geology (or Geography?) class field trip.

At Gatwick, we stayed at Number One Lounge. I appreciate having lounge food because I can control portions. We found a library section in the lounge, which was darker, and we dozed off there for two hours.