EU 2013 - London

After a completely uneventful flight to London on Ryanair, we actually had a bus work out, this time from Stansted to London Liverpool. There are a couple bus options and the Stansted Express train but we thought it would be nice to see outside instead of being in a train for an hour. Plus that the bus had wifi, even if it was a bit mediocre.

First stop was to meet up with some work people for drinks. Great views from the Madison roof bar. Next day was the Wimbledon Mens semifinals. Great 5-hour match between Djokovic and del Potro to start then Andy Murray beating Janowicz in the 2nd. We had left before the end of the Murray match after he was clearly going to win and we had been in our seats for almost 8 hours with only a couple breaks. Very entertaining and a great Wimbledon experience!

St John Bakery near Maltby St

Started the next morning at the Maltby Street Market which has a great variety of food being chased by what appeared to be a significant number of American foodies. It does not suffer due to this at all. Very good and interesting snacks, sandwiches, and other options at stalls on a very narrow street named Ropewalk off of Maltby. Very fresh, very nice people, and a great time in the sun. As a twofer on Saturday markets, you can walk 25 min to Borough Market for their retail (also Thursday and Friday) but I was pretty full at this point and Borough is more of a zoo. Spent the afternoon wandering around while Adrienne went shopping, hitting the Tate Modern and the Paul Smith Sale Shop then heading to Victoria Park for a walk and to visit a couple pubs. Found the beer garden on the park closed for a wedding but enjoyed a few pints at The Hemmingway and The Lauriston in South Hackney. There was some excellent looking pizza at the latter of those two so might have to head back at some point.

For dinner, met one of Adrienne's friends for dinner at St John. Very disappointing, partly because the food was only sort of interesting outside of the desserts this night but also because the server was generally unfamiliar with the dishes and was very rushed despite the restaurant being only half full. Maybe they're losing their touch here. At any rate, not in a hurry to return. St John Bread and Water was great on a previous trip and the bakery near Maltby St was awesome, so it's not all their properties, but maybe the main one could use some attention.

Woke up the next day to find our United Airlines flight canceled and rebooked for two days later. Ostensibly due to the Asiana crash at SFO except that all five other UA, BA, and VS LHR-SFO flights went out that day. Only ours was canceled. Just great. Called UA's UK number and found a very helpful person who tried a number of options but could only slightly help us get back to SFO two days later.

The Eagle - Clerkenwell

With two days to fill, extended our stay with points at the Hyatt Anadaz Liverpool St, which was an excellent, newly-renovated hotel. Great location, very helpful staff, and really an enjoyable stay. So happy to use points here as they seem to run £320+ per night. Used our extra Sunday to have a fantastic lunch at The Eagle in Clerkenwell followed by watching the Wimbledon Mens final at the Slaughtered Lamb and dinner at The Well.  Normal day working from our London offices on Monday with a good dinner at Dishoom in Shoreditch

Headed to LHR in our second attempt to leave on Tuesday morning to find ourselves 59 minutes before our flight. United has a hard cut 60 min before but they did some radio work and got our bags on. Made it to our Boeing 787 Dreamliner to IAH without an issue and everything seemed fine until about the time the doors would close and we would be on our way. Three hours and multiple pilot comments about computer issues with the plane later we were all offloaded and told to wait for future updates in the lounge. This did not sound encouraging and I had called UA earlier to be backed up on a flight the next day as we would be missing our connection in IAH. They said the luggage would be offloaded so we asked to have ours sent to the baggage claim. Got a hotel from UA due to the delay and missed connection and went to the LHR Hilton for the night. UA eventually canceled this flight 6 hours after the scheduled departure time, leading about 150 people in line at Terminal 4 to deal with rooms and rebookings. So two flights cancelled, three days delayed, and have not yet seen compensation from UA. Probably flying BA or VS next time.

London travel basics: $1.50 = £1 at the time of this trip. Vodafone SIM from one of their shops in Kensington. With a Freedom Freebee, £10 gives 100 min of UK calling, 300 UK txts, and 50 Mb of internet. When you top up with a normal £10 (or higher) voucher in the future, it reloads this. Very helpful and extremely useful when calling the United Airlines UK number in multiple attempts to rebook.

Additional photos at flickr