A Little Jaunt to London

A couple of months ago I was offered the opportunity to stay in one of Travelodge’s refurbished hotels, and after considering the different cities offered, I decided that I hadn’t been to London properly in ages, and it was about bloody time. So I packed my best mate and a bag, and off we trundled.

Our hotel was the Heathrow Travelodge, and we were booked in for two nights, so the first night was really just spent getting from the train to the hotel and getting plenty of rest.

We stopped at my favourite London pub, The Rocket on Euston Road for sustenance, before hopping on the Picadilly Line to the hotel. It took around an hour to get there from Kings Cross, but no changes, then a brief Uber from Hounslow tube station up the road to the hotel.

Our room was fairly small, but the bed sure wasn’t. I definitely got two very comfy nights of sleep. With many many gadgets between us, what with phones, cameras, chargers, hair straighteners and what have you, we struggled a little with the fact there were only two power points in the room, and neither of them were by the bed – but an ad in the lift informed us that you can get upgraded rooms which do have plugs by the bed, so that might be something to consider looking into if you have many many electrical things on your person like we generally do. Other than that, and a slightly mouldy shower head, the room was nice and clean and we could control the temperature which was much appreciated.

We did consider a couple of plans before we went, and very nearly booked ourselves onto the Warner Brothers tour because Harry Potter, but in the end we decided that it would be much nicer and far less stressful to just go with the flow, head down with no plan whatsoever and just see where the trip took us. We pretty much had one full day, which was nice, and neither of us really wanted to do anything too touristy – and shopping was definitely not on the cards. I wanted to see arty things, so we got up bright and early and tucked into the all you can eat breakfast (which was seriously good – we were both happy to discover that the bacon was done exactly to our preference) and headed off on the tube to central London.

We made our way to Shoreditch, and pretty much spent all day just wandering around on foot. I got snap happy every single time we came across any street art, and we tried to go to the Cat Cafe, only to discover we were arriving just as they shut for an hour – so we ambled down Brick Lane and grabbed ourselves some coffee and cake at Kahaila Cafe instead.

After a whole lot more wandering, we headed toward Tower Hill to treat ourselves to a Bodeans before heading back to the hotel. With eyes bigger than our stomachs, we merrily attempted to eat all the meat and fries in the world, and had several cocktails as it was happy hour and you know, those are the rules.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still dreaming about that meal – I may have to pay London another visit in the new year just for food purposes.

It was jolly nice of Travelodge to have us, and we had a really good trip!