My wife (a certain age) and I (53) have just returned yesterday from our second fairly magical trip to England. The first trip, back in 2023, was detailed in this trip report on the forum. The occasion for the 2023 trip was Aidan Turner being in a play. The occasion for our return trip was Aidan Turner being in a different play. ;-)
We had learned some things on our first trip, but had also hit most of the highly recommended sites in London, which presented a bit of a challenge in planning, but we got it done.
One thing new is that we are now Global Entry trusted travelers. Having had my first dissociative episode in Heathrow during our first trip, and then a miserable experience at O’Hare on our return, I thought paying for Global Entry might be worth the spend. And it was. We flew through security at O’Hare after having a bit of trouble with American getting our status on our boarding passes. Their system requires each traveler to add their own Known Traveler Number, which was the confounding issue.
Flight out, the overnight nonstop was jammed packed, which made the seats seem smaller and the flight more miserable. My wife had bought an inflatable pillow that gives your face a hole to fit in if you want to sleep. Did not work for her and may have been left in the hotel. Your mileage may vary, but I can’t recommend it.
Arrival in London was easy peasy, a stark contrast to arrival in the US. We had secured ETAs prior to departure, which were linked to our passports using the ETA app, and never heard a word about it sailing through passport control.
Next, Heathrow Express to Paddington and then get Paddington to Bath tickets. The hardest thing about that was scanning two QR codes in two separate PDF documents. The hack that I learned mid trip was to just have a photo of each zoomed QR code on my phone. Bip, send wife through, swipe, bip, and I go through.
Train to Bath was uneventful, and everything was smooth despite us both being exhausted. We stayed at the recommended Brooks Guest House which was a sub mile walk from the train station. Bath is quite pretty, even when overcast, and we were BEAT, so we took our time meandering out to the guest house.
Magdalena checked us in and gave us the ground rules. Brooks is quite charming, with a surprisingly labyrinthine path to our room, possibly due to it being two buildings with the dividing wall knocked out. Our room was basically the bed with a narrow margin around, with a bathroom spread on opposite sides of the room, sink and toilet in one half, shower diagonally across the room. All of this is “delightfully European.”
A second learning from the first trip was to avoid any evening tours or big sites after taking the overnight flight. But, I thought we could have a nice dinner, to celebrate our arrival. So, we hoofed over to Clayton’s Kitchen. I’d done a bit of investigation, and Clayton’s was the most practical for my purposes. We arrived fifteen minutes early, and there was no one in evidence, and it was actually a bit cold and damp out. But come 18:00, the doors opened, we were greeted, seated, and treated. I had the duck and my wife had the chicken, and I tell you, everything on the plate was amazing, even the celeriac purée (which I would normally never think much of). EVERY THING! We split the lemon meringue, which was kind of like a deconstructed pie, and was just heaven. I dunno if that was the exhaustion amping everything, but it doesn’t matter. 13 out of 10.
Hoofed back to the Brooks, navigated to our room, cleaned up, lights out and we were out like the lights.
11,862 steps on the 9th. 6.31 miles or thereabouts.
On Friday, we had the Roman Baths and the Mayor’s tour, but that will be in the next post…