2025 London and TA Day 7: Boarding Day at Southampton

Cruise Day 1: Southampton 

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: Welcome Aboard
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
Location at Sail Away
View from Port Webcam
Location at End of Day (not recorded)

Early in planning I had to figure out the answer to the question “how do you get from your London hotel to Southampton?” The site https://londontoolkit.com came to the rescue here and I learned that, in the range of options, these made the most sense for us:

• Cruise line-sponsored shuttles that (maybe?) picked you up from your specific hotel…although I never got around to confirming this. Cost was apparently GBP89 per person.
• Shuttle van service that (definitely) picked up at 3 specific London hotels and (maybe?) could be scheduled to pickup at YOUR hotel. Takes about 2.5 hours and is designed to get you to Southampton around 11:30A. Cost was $124 per person and (maybe) $180 per person for custom pickup.
• Train service from Waterloo Station to Southampton Station. This takes about 1:20 plus about 10 minutes to get to the station from our hotel. Costs were about $20 per person for standard class. Advance sale tickets opened up about 4 months before date of travel. If you looked online prior to this you would see ridiculous prices (along the lines of $150 per person), which initially threw me for a loop until I realized that you couldn’t ACTUALLY purchase one of those tickets. Once at the SOU station it is either a 15 minute walk or 10 minute taxi ride (GBP 10) to the cruise terminal.
• National Express Coach (bus) service from London’s Victoria Station to the National Express terminal in Southampton. This was the least expensive option (although pretty close to the same price as the train), taking about 2 hours from London, and being subject to any and all possible road delays. I believe the main attraction of the bus was that luggage handling was easier than the train. The bus had guaranteed storage spaces in the luggage compartment, whereas the train essentially has NO provisions for full-size luggage beyond “get it on the train, try to find a home for it, and keep an eye on it.”

Because of the potential for traffic gridlock related to beach-bound traffic, as well as the general principle of strategically trading money to buy speed and/or comfort, I decided early on to use the train service and then grab a taxi to the port. I did put out a question on CruiseCritic regarding the reliability of this service and received a fantastic answer that set my mind at ease about taking the train on morning of embarkation as well as receiving guidance that any kind of train strike would almost definitely NOT impact this particular route.

Doing a bit more research on buying train tickets led to the discovery that online purchases direct from the South Western Railway website would fail for non-UK users, as the site requires users to create accounts, and won’t accept non-UK addresses. However, the solution appears to be to use another National Rail company, as they can all book tickets for each other with no additional fees, and the LNER site, in particular, was called out as a good choice. It appears that the privatization of the railroads has led to differing user experiences depending on the company you use! A UK resident pointed out that SWR runs routes that are much more oriented to UK natives, while LNER visits (more) places that tourists would go, which is why their ticket-buying experience is more considerate of non-residents. Another CC user helped clarify that, when purchasing on LNER’s website, we’d receive the message that no reserved seats were available and that we might have to stand during the trip. This is apparently an artifact of the fact that SWR doesn’t sell reserved seats on that train and everything is first-come/first-served. So the warning could/should be ignored as being unhelpful!

I did do some test lookups in May 2024 for train tickets for August 2024 (equivalent to what I’d be doing in May 2025 to actually buy tickets for August 2025). I noted that the limited number of 1st Class tickets were booked pretty quickly. On May 1, 2024 I could check (Saturday) August 17 – and for all the trains that arrived at SOU prior to noon – which approximates what we’d be doing in 2025 – there were typically only 3-5 seats left. So looked like I needed to setup a calendar reminder so I could ensure I bought tickets on the first available date in 2025. My tests on 6/1/24 suggested that I could purchase a ticket up to 82 days in advance, so I set an alert for 6/1/25 (90 days ahead of desired date) and started paying attention from there.

I also (very briefly) looked at the difference between First Class and Second Class on the train system and, frankly, couldn’t see any value in the more expensive tickets. In June 2025 someone on CC posted about their recent train trip and mentioned that they’d run across several cruise passengers who had bought FC tickets only to discover that these seats were regularly oversold and that they could find no open FC seating! Strangely, UK-based respondents not only confirmed this, but clarified that a ticket (on this “commuter train”) didn’t actually guarantee you a place on the train – there is apparently no limit to how many they might sell, and even with a ticket (and even with a specifically-timed ticket) you might find yourself with no room on a train! Finally, on June 18, 2025 I purchased two tickets on the LNER website for the 935A train. Total cost at time of purchase was about USD 37 for both tickets.

Having decided to take the train, the next task was figuring out how to get from our hotel to the Waterloo train station. The initial two main options were to take the Underground or take a bus. In this case, the bus was the hands-down winner, as it avoided the use (and endless stairs) of Charing Cross Underground station and replaced it instead with a short 500’ walk from the hotel to the bus stop for a bus that arrived every 3 to 8 minutes. In the end, we went with option #3(!) – we just grabbed a cab outside the hotel at the Charing Cross station taxi stand and were at Waterloo Station in about 6 minutes – no muss, no fuss, no bus! Cost was just under GBP10, but we were happy to trade cash for convenience in this case. No need to walk our luggage down the street and onto a bus.

As for boarding in Southampton itself, the main questions to be answered were:

a) What were the options for getting from the SOU train station to the cruise terminal, and

b) How strictly were boarding times enforced? For this one, it seemed that boarding was extremely efficient and Royal was NOT paying attention to whether you were arriving in your assigned time slot or not.

As for a), I found several videos online that discussed various options. Essentially, the two most viable were to take a 6-8 minute taxi ride from the taxi queue just outside the train station to the terminal for about GBP 10, or to make a 10-15 minute walk between same. The walk is along mostly level sidewalks and seemed quite doable, particularly if the weather cooperated. I thought we were still spry enough to do this if we wanted to. FWIW, the walk also took you past a pretty good wine shop with decent prices, so we could potentially stop and pick up two bottles of wine if we wanted. OTOH, there was a giant CC thread where EVERY current Royal cocktail recipe was being posted, and we spent the intervening months before the cruise trying a LOT of them and finding a LOT of them we liked, so we figured to be much more aggressive with cocktails this cruise and wine seemed like it might be superfluous! Probably going to be a last minute decision. (Our March 2025 cruise on Navigator proved that we were OK to forgo wine drinking in favor of cocktails!)

Another thing I like to do is locate webcams for all the various ports we’d be using. There’s not a lot to learn from these, but occasional visits during times when ships were arriving or departing were sometimes entertaining. Although I couldn’t find a webcam specific to the pier used by RCCL in Southampton, there were still 5 different cameras available that could be used sequentially to get a good long look at various arrivals and departures.

Finally, in June 2025 I decided to cash in 30,000 B of A credit card points in return for $300 OBC. This would go a long way to covering our cocktail expenses onboard.

Right around August 10 I happened to check the Royal app on my phone and noticed that they’d started to populate the Cruise Compass with (some) of the activities planned. I started a new tab on the Spreadsheet of Fun with the intention of jotting down certain classes of events (such as Headliners and other special shows, game shows, trivia, lectures, etc.) so I could begin to try to find a nice mix of stuff that didn’t all collide with one another. Both trivia and music acts were very slow to populate – a week later those events were still missing – and I noticed that the headliner schedule was re-arranged a few times, so I probably started this exercise too early. However, it ultimately was helpful because we were able to strategically time our theater attendance and ended up attending things that we might otherwise have missed in other venues. We also ensured that we caught as many of the different musical acts as possible. By the time we flew out all Cruise Planner data was present except for the music schedule from cruise day 9+. That fully populated during our days in London.

At that same time that the activities calendar was published, the MDR menus were posted, too. This was VERY handy for me, as I was able to go through each night’s menu and pre-plan my meals. This way I ensured I got a nice variety and avoided repetition that might have otherwise resulted from not knowing what was coming in future days. I also discovered that a couple of the MDR menus were “difficult” to select options from, and that caused us to spend time after boarding on this first day adjusting our dining plans. We moved a couple of our specialty reservations to coincide with the nights of poor MDR choices. By the time of the actual cruise, a couple of the menus had swapped positions for reasons unknown.

Back to the day of…

We were up at 730A for a light breakfast and then out of the Clemont to an available taxi (no waiting) and walking into the doors at Waterloo Station at 830A. The station is a wonderful mix of old-timey architecture with a thin layer of technology over it. We checked the schedule boards and waited for our train to come up on the list. The boards show active schedules for each of the 18 or so platforms, and then there’s another section showing upcoming trains – so you basically have to wait for your train to be promoted off the “upcoming” board to the “at the platform” board. Given the busy pace of the station our 830P train didn’t make it onto the “at the platform” board until around 810P. Upon boarding we discovered that the train wasn’t anywhere near as full as we had expected, so we took seats on either side of the aisle from each other and placed our bags on the seats next to us without any concerns.



Upon arrival at Southampton Central we stepped off the train, left the platform, exited the station, and walked barely half a block to the head of the taxi queue, where there were already 5 taxis lined up and loading up at the same time. We got into the 5th cab (being 5th in line) and were on our way to the station. For such a short ride there was a surprising amount of traffic that had to be navigated, and the stop lights seemed strangely timed. There was a lot of sitting in traffic. While the taxi is supposed to be faster than walking I felt like, in the end, the timing was about the same.

Once we exited that taxi, however, things really moved fast. We had to cross a couple of drop-off lanes to get to the main sidewalk of the terminal, and before we were halfway across a porter came up and accepted our bags from us – so we were free of those before we knew it. Once in the doors of the terminal we showed our e-Passes and were directed to a dude with tablets who took our pictures (click click) and dropped the rope behind him allowing us to head for the gangway. From taxi to standing on the ship was about 8 minutes, tops. Incredibly efficient!



We immediately went to our muster stations (B6) to check in,



then went over to Giovanni’s as I was hoping to change our 2nd reservation from night 13 to night 15, since the night 15 menu (Bon Voyage) seemed so bleak. They had no availability at the time, however, so we had to leave things as they were - but we were able to pull off the rescheduling later in the cruise. With those administrative details out of the way we headed up to Windjammer for the (expected) blah lunch. We both had some variation of their carved beef.

I had made a pre-cruise commitment to myself to try a wider variety of foods, including desserts, so started with two new dessert choices: Apple Pound Cake (both thought it pretty good) and Crème Brule with Caramel (both thought OK but not perfect).

Post-lunch, we picked up E’s soda cup at the Pool Bar. We then lounged on a lounger until staterooms opened at 1P. Below are some photos I took of the surrounding area from the fantail area of the Windjammer. Both P&O and Princess were at neighboring docks. We were sailing out of the City Cruise Terminal.

We unpacked ourselves in the room which had lots of storage space, and we did a surprisingly good job of keeping our cabin tidy throughout the whole cruise. I had the Samsung DEX connection to the TV sorted by about 215P, so we made the first trip to our home-away from our home-away-from-home: Schooner Bar. We met Don and Cheryl, a couple from Kentucky, and chatted about 45 minutes with them. She was a retired finance type and he was a retired air traffic controller, so I was able to grill him on some topics that were of real interest to me.

Around 3P, we decided to sample Park Café’s snacks, so we returned to Deck 11 (home of Windjammer, the pool, and Park Café). At PC we picked up a couple of turkey wraps and then stopped at the Pool Bar to get our first drinks of the cruise. This drink (a mai tai) was our first hint that Royal has opted for an absolutely HORRIBLE OJ mix. It took us about 3 drink orders to recognize that any drink with OJ in it was unpleasant to drink. Once we figured that out we ended up drinking mostly nothing but Handcrafted Margaritas for the rest of the cruise. We took food and drink to a seating area on Centrum 9 and listened to a couple of the music groups for about 2 hours.

1. There were several music acts aboard, and even now I’m having troubles ID’ing two of them. The musicians were:
2. The house band, Cosmic Waves. This was 4 people: guitar/vocals, bass/limited backing vocals, drums, and female vocalist. For the first several days I thought this was Banda Certa, but later realized their true name. They were quite good and had a very wide music catalog and I'm not sure I ever heard a repeat. The only complaint (minor) is that the female vocalist’s Mexican accent made her lyrics a tiny bit mushy – but they were technically quite accomplished and we enjoyed their stuff many times.
3. Two different keyboardist + vocalist duos. One was called Banda Certa and the other the CBJ Duo. Even now I’m not sure which was which. Both featured a male keyboardist and a female vocalist. One of the keyboardists also had recordings backing the music to supplement the keyboard. One of the vocalists – I THINK it was CBJ – was more of a contralto and all their music was transposed down several steps from original keys. We preferred the duo who didn’t transpose, but neither one of these groups was of the quality of Cosmic Waves.
4. A piano+violin duo, the B-Twins. Twin sisters always wearing identical outfits playing a range of tunes from classical to pop. The violinist had a bit more finesse than the pianist, who just seemed to bang stuff out at max volume. However, they were pleasant enough to listen to and we heard them several times, mostly in the Schooner. There were a few repeats in their numbers, but they had a decent mix of tunes.
5. A solo guitarist, Beatriz. We only listened to her a few times, mostly in the Schooner. She didn’t seem to have a big repertoire, as we heard Classical Gas (among other things) several times. To us, she was mostly innocuous background music.
6. A guitarist/vocalist, Lee Simon. He played exclusively at the Pub, which we not only never set foot in but we never actually even passed by (other than once on Boarding Day, before the Casino had opened). The Pub was on Deck 6 (like Schooner) but was located between the Casino and the Theater. We never wanted to pass through the Casino when heading forward to the Theater, so we always did that passage via Deck 5.
7. A pianist/vocalist, Dave Carey. He played at the Schooner, but mostly late at night, past our bed time, so we never heard him play.
8. And, of course, the Brilliance of the Seas orchestra, who backed the Production shows as well as some of the Headliner acts, along with the Royal Caribbean singers. The four singers were pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of talent.

After a quick pre-dinner nap for E we went down to the MDR for our first meal. We were seated on Deck 4 next to a port-side window and served by our waitress, Keysheelie from the Philippines, and our assistant waiter, James from Bermuda. We instantly liked both of them and therefore took steps post-dinner to lock in table 622 as our permanent table for the rest of the cruise. The MTD experience on Brilliance seemed much less disorganized than it had on Navigator. Post-dinner we found ourselves sitting on Centrum 5, listing to Cosmic Waves, then ended at the Theater watching Duo Elegia, a married couple that did a rather mundane circus act including dance, hula hoop work, minor clowning, acrobatics, and aerial work.

Through the cruise we always attended the 2nd showing, typically at 9P. Our audiences were always appreciative but were generally pretty subdued. A typical Sunday matinee audience, if you will. I believe that the 7P audiences were ALWAYS pretty subdued. This cruise definitely had a much older demographic than other cruises we’ve been on. In total I’m not sure we saw more than 8 kids, and at least 3 of those were babies. I wouldn’t be surprised if E and I were below the median age aboard.

At this point we were already settling into a pattern that would be repeated throughout the cruise for us. Basically, our days involved:

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• Wake up anWe'd go to Windjammer for breakfast, carrying our tablets with us.
• Spend most of the morning sitting in Schooner Bar, playing our daily games, reading, and/or playing The Crew.
• Hit up Windjammer for lunch.
• Spend most of the afternoon sitting in Schooner (or Colony Club a few times).
• Head to the cabin around 530P or so for possible nap and then get ready for dinner
• Dinner (615P for specialty nights, 645P for MDR nights)
• Head up to Centrum 6, 7, or 8 to sit and listen to live music playing on Centrum 5.
• At 830P, head over to the Theater and grab our preferred seats (balcony house right) and read until the 9P show.
• At 945P head back to (most commonly) Centrum 9 seating to listen to more live music.
• Bed time

As such, in subsequent nights of this narrative I’m going to dispense with blow-by-blow accounts and simply show the pre-cruise plans vs the actual things we did and, where appropriate, make comments about stuff that was unique.

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2025 London and TA Day 6: Victoria & Albert Museum

We both slept poorly overnight and didn’t get up until 930A. Feeling sluggish, we both settled for cereal for breakfast. Most importantly, however, we decided to simplify our day and punted on revisiting The Design Museum and limiting ourselves to just The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. This turned out to be a great decision as the V&A was this trip’s “surprise attraction”. We ended up spending about 4 hours at the museum and would have gladly stayed longer if we’d had the energy. There were just so many wonderful exhibits.

Hanging in a central location is a Chihuly glass chandelier. I’m guessing it was about 25’-30’ high. The minotaur fight was a sculpture that was about 2’ high.

In the Hall of Casts were many life-size castings of famous works from around the world, most of them adding to the museum in the 19th century. What was most surprising was the size of the David statue. Neither of us had any idea that the original was so large. I personally thought that it was human-sized. There was also a cast of Trajan's Column.

Miscellaneous casts:

Achilles being dipped into the River Styx, and La Gorgone:

While there we grabbed lunch at their garden café (we shared a nice ham sandwich, crisps, and grapes) while watching children play in the wading pond.

We finally left around 330P. On a very crowded train back we discovered that we’re old: both of us were offered seats by a pair of 20-something girls!

Dinner was at Port House, a tapas place on The Strand. It was really good, especially the Arroz Portugese and the giant Gin and Tonic (which I did NOT share)> :-)

After sampling several dishes we ended the night by with a final trip to Amorino and then packed our bags in prep for tomorrow’s trip to Southampton and the start of our trans-Atlantic cruise!

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2025 London and TA Day 5: British Museum and London Museum Docklands

Today’s Weather



We slept in a bit, not getting up until around 9A. Disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to sample the “Clermont Breakfast Yorkshire Pudding” at breakfast, but still enjoyed a nice start to the day.

Our morning activity was the iconic British Museum.



I had, of course, done some research pre-trip and had a plan that would take us to 10-12 “must see” artifacts, but for some reason I couldn’t pull up the information when needed and, as such, we were a bit directionless during our visit. The place is HUGE, and so much of it seems like the typical “display case full of pots and arrowheads” that I tend to find boring. Fortunately, as a result of listening to scores of episodes of The British History Podcast, we were aware of the treasures found at Sutton Hoo and found the gallery where they were located. That was interesting. However, our overall stay was just under two hours, with us leaving at 1140A. While walking to Underground station we looked for lunch options but, finding none, we made our way over to Canary Wharf hoping to find something before touring the London Museum Docklands.

The walk to the museum is right along a canal, teeming with rental boats.



Although the day was a bit gray it was “summer weather” to many and we saw several rentals out. There were mundane boats, but also things like the Spa Boat, the BBQ Boat, and a rubber duck boat.

The restaurant options around the museum were all much too fancy (and too much food) for our tastes, so we opted to simply get something at the museum’s snack bar. The options there turned out to be extremely limited, however, so we ended up sharing a (very disappointing) tomato and cheese croissant and a bag of crisps. It wasn’t filling, but it took the edge off.

The museum itself was pretty interesting, but after 2 hours our feet were sore and our brains starting to turn to mush, so we did a speed run through the last few galleries before heading back to the hotel, stopping off at a Sainsbury Local by the hotel to pickup some Oreo Gingerbread biscuits and drinks to enjoy in our room as we relaxed before dinner.

Dinner was at Flat Iron (Southbank), a popular chain that offers a limited menu (one specific type of steak) and extremely reasonable prices. Although there was one closer to the hotel, we were unable to get a reservation there and therefore ended up walking across the river on the Golden Jubilee Bridge to the store at The Royal Festival Hall.






Upon entry, you’re given popcorn while you peruse the menu. We both had the Flat Iron Steak, a green salad, and Homemade Beef Dripping Chips – plus a 375ml bottle of wine, each. I got a peppercorn sauce on the side, but it did not improve things so I left it alone. The food wasn’t the world’s greatest, but we enjoyed the meal. With the bill they gave us two little cleavers (sized as if for a charm bracelet) that could be exchanged for a mini ice cream cone, but we pocketed those and instead stopped at Amorino on our way to returning to the hotel.

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2025 London and TA Day 4: The Museum of the Home and West End Theater

We’d previously been to the Geffrye Museum (now renamed The Museum of the Home) with the boys in 2014 and found it fascinating. This time, however, E and I planned to make use of the audio guide for ADULTS rather than the family guide we’d used with the boys. Further, I hoped we could also take the guided tour of Almshouse 14. Not sure if that had been an option back in 2014 or not but it sounded interesting.

As it happens, the museum has made some changes since we last were there. Sadly, the guided audio is no longer offered. Additionally, some of the older sitting rooms have been removed, with many of the artifacts being repurposed for standard display case style exhibits. They’ve also revised some of the sitting rooms and really leaned into social issues further. For example, what used to be the 1960’s sitting room was now revised to reflect (IIRC) Caribbean culture, while others focused on a lesbian setting, an Indian setting, and a futuristic setting. While still interesting, it was not the experience we’d hoped to have and we were somewhat disappointed by our followup visit. We also missed the Almshouse 14 tour by about 10 minutes!

I’d also intended to make Dennis Sever’s House our afternoon destination, having gone so far as to contact them earlier in the year to confirm that they were going to be open during the time of our visit. While the house was open, it was only open on weekends during our time in London so we couldn’t follow through with our plan to visit. I had a backup plan (of course!) to visit Victoria Embankment Garden if we hadn’t already done so on the 1st day in town, or potentially check out the shops at Covent Garden. Instead, we opted for the relaxation route and, after first stopping at a Pret on Villiers Street and buying a sandwich and chips (crisps) to share, we took our snacks back to the room and enjoyed them while relaxing on our couch. After that, I napped HARD for 40 minutes.

Post-nap, we wandered back to Villiers Street to investigate the cheesy souvenir shops to see if we could find anything for the kids and/or a Christmas ornament, but we came up empty-handed. Also tried to find a geocache on Lower Water Street, but based on recent DNFs it looked like the cache had gone missing about 10 days ago. I noted that the pipe that was the probable GZ seemed to have new water sealant around it, so my theory is that the city had just recently repaired something and removed the cache at the same time.

On the way back to the room in order to get ready for dinner and our theater tickets we stopped to look at the Eleanor Cross outside Charing Cross Station.

Finally, we set out for dinner at Prezzo (London St Martin’s Lane). For a chain restaurant it was pretty good. I had The Spicy One pizza while E tried the Spaghetti Carbonara. We both had side salads. After dinner we walked just past the theater to a gelato place (la Gelatiera in Covent Garden) for dessert – it was OK, but not close to the quality of Amorino!

In April 2025 I looked online for all the shows, music, and comedy events that might be possible while in London. I’d already ruled out 2:30P matinees performances, but after some thought I decided that a 7:30P show wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, especially since so many theaters were less than 10 minutes walking distance from The Clermont. From among all the possibilities we selected “The Comedy About Spies” at the Noel Coward Theatre. This show was presented by Mischief Theatre, the same folks who produced “The Show That Goes Wrong” and similar fare.

The show was hysterical. They maintained the farcical pace from start to finish, and the show was VERY physically demanding on the cast. We saw all the prime cast except for Nancy Zamit, who apparently had the night off. Our seats were in the 2nd row of the Dress Circle and were excellent. We had an fantastic time and the 2:30 minute show (including intermission) passed by in a flash. We made the quick walk back to the hotel in reasonably quiet streets and arrived back in our room by 1010P.

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2025 London and TA Day 3: The Postal and London Transport Museums

Today’s Weather and Internet

 


We started the day around 730A, following a really good night’s sleep. We went down to breakfast about 8A, held on the 1st floor in an older style parlour. The buffet was excellent, and similar to that of the Grand Hotel Stockholm. There was a selection of hot food for creating your own Full English, with the main entrée changing daily. I only recall the 2nd day’s main, which was the Clermont Breakfast Yorkshire Pudding (which was awaiting restock when I dished up, so never had it). Additionally, there was a bagel/smoked salmon/cheese station, a pastry station, a cereal station, and a fresh-baked bread station. The morning buffet was setup in the bar beside the dining area.

First visit of the day was to The Postal Museum via a 25 minute bus ride. We started with a ride on the Mail Train underneath the post office, which was very well done. As the train moved through portions of the tunnels you’d stop occasionally and projections would play on the curved walls to illustrate some aspect of the history of the railway system.

The train cars themselves were a bit cramped. E and I shared the two seats of a car, with me wedged into the rear-facing seat diagonally. While my left leg could be on the ground, my right leg rested over E’s legs onto her forward-facing seat.

The train ride was followed by a meander through their so-so museum, after which we took a bus back to the area of the London Transport Museum where we had a 130P timed entry. As it was just prior to noon and light rain was falling, we decided to have lunch at a nearby Pret and lazed at our table until it was time to walk over to the museum, first making a quick reconnoiter of Covent Garden, filled with smells from the fried food booths (I think).

The Transport Museum was really interesting. Despite our growing fatigue as the day progressed, we still spent about 2.5 hours there before walking back to the hotel. We intended to head to our room for a nap, but housekeeping would consistently not get to our room until late afternoon, as we discovered on this first day as they knocked on the door just as we were about to settle in. Instead, we went down to the hotel’s bar and enjoyed a drink before returning in time for a quick nap before our dinner at Palm Court Brassiere, which was back in Covent Garden. We shared some pre-entrée sourdough bread – with butter for E and black olive tapenade for E. For dinner I had the Whole Tiger Prawns (nice but not spectacular) while E had the Half Chicken, which she enjoyed.

We skipped Palm Court’s dessert choices and instead went to the gelato place we’d seen by the hotel on Villiers street – and it was EXCELLENT. I had their dark chocolate (which I believe was the “Amorino Chocolate”, although this may be the standard chocolate I got the 2nd time we went) while E sampled their Cherry. We were both impressed! From there, it was back to the hotel so we could watch some TV, read, and then get to sleep.

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2025 London and TA Day 1 and 2: SFO to LHR

Flying on Virgin Atlantic

Location at Start of Day….Home. D’uh!

In revising the London portion, when we decided to combine the TA cruise with the London trip I dropped several days of activities, including removal of all locations that weren’t directly in London itself. So, no more Eltham Palace (which, upon further investigation, I discovered to be a 1930s Art Deco building built around a medieval Great Hall, so not worth the trip), no HP Studio Tour revisit, etc. What was left was primarily museums.

We're on our way!

One question that cropped up around July 2024 and took some time to resolve related to some announced changes to entry requirements to the UK for non-citizens. The date at which those new requirements would be implemented was not clear, and therefore I had to keep checking back to see if we’d have to file additional paperwork to obtain the necessary clearances. It was clear that the days of flying with just a US passport are coming to an end, and pre-entry authorizations that are less rigorous than a full visa would be coming. In September 2024 things started to clear up as it was announced that, effective 8 Jan 2025, Americans would need to have an ETA (electronic travel authorization) in order to fly to the UK. Applications would open 27 November 2024 at the UK Application Portal. Pricing was announced at GBP 10 per person for an authorization that would last 2 years and could be used for multiple entries during that period. 

Upon learning this, I set a calendar reminder to look at obtaining our ETAs in July 2025, about 2 months prior to our planned flight. However, even that became muddy as in October 2024 there were some noises online that those dates were slipping later and later. Again, had to go back into wait-and-see mode.  At the end of December 2024, I once again reviewed the status of ETAs and reconfirmed that we’d need to apply for one. I also realized that we MIGHT need an ETIAS, also, given that the cruise would stop at Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland, which were slated to require the appropriate pre-authorization starting in May 2025 (following years of delays). I decided not to spend time trying to understand whether going ashore and returning to the ship would demand pre-existence of an ETIAS – I figured that, if they accepted applications, we’d simply get them. So added to my July 2025 reminder to also apply for an ETIAS, too. In early 2025 it was announced that ETIAS implementation was delayed until at least 2026, so didn’t have to do this one.

I executed on the ETA application on April 3, 2025 – once again a bit spooked by the newly installed tariffs and uncertainty if there might be any retaliation by the UK for US-based applicants. Using their Android app it took about 5 minutes to take photos, scan the chip in our passports (I didn’t know we could do this!), and pay the USD $13.45 per person. Within one minute of submitting our requests we had our emailed approvals and were ready to go!

The original expectation was that we’d take the same Virgin Atlantic (VS) SFO-LHR flight we’ve taken on prior trips to the UK. On our last trip we splurged on Premium Economy and those wider seats made a HUGE difference in our trip. We were so much more comfortable on the flight over and not nearly as tired as we’d been previously.

Sadly, when I looked at the details for VS20, it turned out that Virgin had changed to their newer A350-1000 plane on that route instead of the older (but better/wider PE seating) B787-900. During summer season, however, Virgin adds a 2nd flight (VS42 from SFO) that still uses the B787-900 – or, at least, this was true as of December 2024. VS20 was a 500P->1100A flight, whereas VS42 was scheduled for 1030P to 435P. The more we thought about the later arrival the more we liked the idea. We figured we’d pull into London around 630P or so – and probably very tired, on the assumption that we’d sleep little on the overnight flight. Combine that with our appetites probably being a bit “off”, the idea of dropping stuff at the hotel and simply walking to a local light meal (like fish and chips or even, god forbid, Five Guys) and then going to bed didn’t sound too bad!

I started tracking both pricing and seat availability in November 2024. At that time two of the PE seats were already booked and the one-way prices for PE were running around $1200pp. Looking at flights heading out in March 2025 for comparison purposes showed those selling at about $900pp – so I figured if/when I could snag flights around 1K each I’d grab them (unless I needed to move sooner simply to ensure we got the seats we wanted). Unfortunately, the 2-3-2 seat arrangement meant that only 12 of the 20 PE seats on the sides could be booked by me (the two front rows required either higher status than we have or cost an additional $78), and two of those were already sold when I started tracking. By mid-November another 4 were gone, so I pulled the trigger right away as I didn’t want a repeat of our last trip, where I had to work very hard to find a flight with available PE seats. So, on 11/17/2024 I booked the last row of PE as several posters on seatguru.com had specifically commented that the last row could stay fully reclined w/o impeding anything – and one reviewer specifically said that the proximity to Economy didn’t result in any significant increase in noise. Later, I came across a few videos, including someone who sat in our exact seats (25A and 25C) and could therefore see visual evidence of what the written reviews said. I did, at one point, toy with the idea of splurging on Upper Class (figuring “hey we should try this ONCE in our lives”), but the more I researched the less impressive it sounded. Lots of complaints on SeatGuru that Virgin’s angled seats made your neck hurt in order to look out the window, the seats lacked places to stash drinks, glasses, etc., and the “lay flat” seats were VERY uncomfortable compared to other airlines.

For the return from Boston I was excited to see that JetBlue flew BOS-SJC, and that they rated extremely highly on seat comfort, including 18” wide seats as standard. Unfortunately, a deeper look showed that they only fly into SJC “seasonally”, and when I did a test booking for our return date of 9/14/25 I discovered that they had no SJC routes at that time. So I had to keep looking, knowing that the choices were either to fly BOS-SFO (in which case we could do JetBlue and/or other non-stop flights) or BOS-SJC with 1 stop, non-stops being non-existent. Given that JetBlue is about half the price of everyone else I suspect that we’ll end up flying back to SFO (and probably just standard Economy as the reviews of the Extra Room seats were not very impressive).

Like our trip to Alaska in 2014, flight schedules changed in the months leading up to the trip. Our SFO-LHR flight changed as follows:

Original Booking: VS42 Dep 10:15P Arr 4:35P

Revised 24 Dec 2024 VS42 Dep 9:20P Arr 3:50P net positive change!

On December 31, 2024 Virgin filed some route changes that included returning to the B787-900 on VS20 instead of the A350-1000 that had been indicated when I bought the tickets (and had been driven to use flight VS42, instead). While I theoretically could have taken steps to move us back onto VS20 I decided to keep things as-is. I was curious about whether the later departure from SFO (and consequent later arrival at LHR) would be a better fit for us. I recall how, post-VS20 arrival for our last trip, we had about 2-3 “good” hours of energy and had both pretty much crashed by about 6P GMT – right while trying to eat dinner. Perhaps this time we’d still have “good” hours through dinner and then crash at the “right” time around 10P?

RE: Virgin pricing: On April 15, 2025 I noted the first movement of prices. The $1200pp rate had dropped to $855pp. BIIIIIG drop! I immediately looked at our flight to see whether PE seats were still available – but it turned out the cabin was fully booked, so this was a “fake” price since there was no way to take advantage of it. I certainly wasn’t going to risk cancelling our confirmed seats in hopes of being able to rebook them at the lower rate! I did check into the schedule of one-stop flights SFO-LHR to see if perhaps I could find a cheaper (yes) Premium Economy on Virgin that also flew the 787-900 – but, alas, the connections in Seattle flew the A330-900 while LAX flew the A350-1000, and both of those suffer from having only 18.5” wide seats in PE. So while we could have saved about $600 by connecting, this didn’t seem worth the extra 3 hours of total flight time to fly in narrower seats.

While all this research and (fun) time-wasting was going on, cruise check-in arrived 45 days ahead of boarding, at 4P on July 15. I was, of course, online as the clock changed to 4P (i.e. midnight at the port of embarkation) and spent 3 minutes updating the web page before wondering whether my calculations were off. I took a short break. A random refresh at 410P yielded the check-in link, however, and I hurriedly completed data entry, including a couple of selfie photos we’d taken about 30 minutes previously. I was presented with a list of arrival windows and choose the earliest offered (1130A-noon) and that was that. Set Sail passes were dumped to PDF for later inclusion in the Folder of Fun. The entire process took just under 5 minutes once I got started.

On August 1st, Royal issued our Cruise Documents. On that same day I also canceled our Reykjavik bus tour because their rescheduled event made no sense. We were slated to leave at a rescheduled noon for a 6-hour trip – for a port visit that ended at 5P! So they had their heads up their butts. I could have potentially rescheduled for a 9:30A departure, but I had low confidence in Shore Excursions Group at this point. Instead, I figured I’d take our plans of the 1st afternoon and simply move them to the following morning.

As expected, I got an email 24 hours prior to our departure time indicating that we could check-in for our flight. For the first time, I decided to wait until we got to the airport before completing the process. I had looked up our flight record on Virgin’s site and it seemed like they wanted some additional info ahead of time about our passports, and some of the fields were asking about our return flight. Of course, since we’re taking a cruise ship to come back to the US I suspected that there might need to be some discussion at the check-in desk about what our plans were to leave the UK. I just figured it would be easier to let the check-in experts figure things out rather than me trying to guess what fields I could ignore.
According to a quick look at Expert Flyer’s Seat Map, it looked like our flight was about 75% full. Our 35 seat Premium Economy section was filled. Interestingly enough, when I checked again 24 hours later (AFTER check-in had opened) it showed only 5 seats available: 3 Upper Class and 2 Economy. I assume this results from seats locked by the airline being opened up for folks at check-in time. So it would seem that roughly 75% of the passengers pre-selected their seats (from a subset of the options) and the other 25% took what was left at time of check-in.

Based on the schedule of activities we experienced on VS20 during our trip to Scotland in 2023, the anticipated timing of VS42 onboard events was as follows:

Boarding/PE Drinks 820P (PST) / 420A (GMT)

Pushback/Taxi 920P / 520A

Takeoff 945P / 545A

Snack + drink 1025P / 625A

Dinner + 2nd drink 1055P / 655A

3rd drink 1155P / 755A

Lights out 1210A / 810A

Lights on (110 pre-land) 500A / 100P

Breakfast (90 pre-land) 520A / 120P

Landing 750A / 350P

We could generally depart SFO up to 60 minutes late (calculating from the 920P pushback time) and still make it to LHR “on time”.

Something interesting I learned as I was reviewing prior flights of VS42 over a period of a few weeks: flight routing varies a LOT. I always assumed that a flight would basically follow the same path every time, but that’s not the case. In particular, once VS42 leaves the US it is very unpredictable how it will get to LHR. Sometimes it heads north into Canada and passes over some portion of Hudson Bay – but sometimes south of that. Sometimes it passes over a portion of Greenland, but sometimes south of that. Sometimes it makes landfall in northern Scotland and other times it instead passes over Ireland. So it isn’t just a question of which runways it takes off from in SFO and/or lands on at LHR that clearly drive the first and last parts of a flight path – weather and/or winds (I assume) have a huge effect on all the middle parts of the flight, too. I had originally intended to give myself some landmarks to look for during the first 30 minutes of the flight heading out of SFO, but there was too much variability there to get specific. Sometimes the flight would pass north of Woodland, other times south of Davis. By the time the flight hits the Nevada border we could be several hundred miles either side of Tahoe!

One week prior to the flight we were sent a link to allow us to pre-select our dinner meal. The choices were pretty bleak:

• Three Cup Asian Style Braised Chicken with steamed rice, stir fried vegetables
• Roasted Parsley Cod with beurre blanc, creamy mashed potatoes, buttered green beans and carrots
• Seared Spinach Stuffed Gnocchi with shimeji mushroom, pesto cream sauce, and baby tomatoes

While I thought that the cod had the best overall menu, neither one of us was prepared to trust microwaved fish, so we both opted for the chicken. In a surprise move, the next day Virgin emailed out a link to the onboard menu for Premium Economy, so we were able to see both dinner and breakfast offerings ahead of time. The chicken turned out to be pretty poor, unfortunately. However, since we’d recently finished with our stop at Burger King on the way to S&W’s we weren’t left hungry.

Eileen can often sleep for an hour or so on a flight, but in general it is close to impossible for me to sleep. In the ongoing quest to figure out a solution, we both tried new travel pillows this time as none of our prior choices have worked well for her – or at all, for me. This time we’re both trying the Trtl Travel Cool Pillow, which I found for sale on the company’s store at a price much lower than Amazon’s. On the surface the ergonomics made a lot of sense to me. In practice, I liked the pillow. I was still unable to sleep, but for about 2 hours I was able to relax and avoided all the constant tossing and turning that’s usual for me. E didn’t find the pillow to be beneficial to her, however.

Another difference in packing for this trip is an acknowledgement of both our age as well as the length of the trip. For the first time we’re carrying a 3rd toilet kit. This one is stuffed with a lot of OTC medications, “just in case”. We’re aware that we’re at the tail end of our Covid vaccinations and are heading into a lot of large groups in constrained spaces, whether airplane, buses, trains, or ships – and we’re going to be far away from the convenience of drug stores much less medical care. Therefore, we loaded up on cold meds, sleep meds, gut meds, pair relievers, and pretty much anything we could think of. Hopefully we’ll never have need for any of this stuff – but we don’t want to make a bad situation worse by not having as much help available as possible.

And then…finally…after more than two years of planning, it was Sunday August 24, 2025 and time to get this vacation started!

I started the day by looking at the status of our arriving aircraft, then in the process of flying from LHR to SFO as flight VS41. Hoping to find that it was arriving at SFO earlier than its nominal 730P arrival time, as that would suggest that our 920P pushback from the gate was an extremely high probability event. This seemed to be the case – it was tracking to arrive around 701P - but then the ultimate case of irony! 

I had been watching VS41 live for WEEKS. I’d watched dozen of hours of this flight, getting a sense for how things worked. Finally, on the day that VS41’s actual performance REALLY mattered? Well, somewhere over NE Canada FlightRadar24 decided the flight had ended and stopped tracking it in real-time. I could still follow it on FlightAware, but I didn’t have the “feel” of FlightAware, so ended up tracking UA939 (also LHR-SFO) that appeared to be on pace to land just 2 minutes ahead of VS41 and used that as my benchmark. Unbelievable! About 2 hours after disappearing from FlightRadar the flight came back and I was able to see that it was going to arrive at SFO early.

Having packed our bags the night before, we said farewell to the cat and drove to S&W’s house, stopping along the way at Burger King to have a small fast food snack since we didn’t expect to have onboard food until around 11P PDT. We arrived at their house around 615P. We handed over E’s keys (I kept mine), for we had decided to stash our car at their house while we were out of town (leaving space in the garage should our house-sitter want to park her car) and S then drove us to SFO (in our car, so no need to move our luggage), arriving around 645P to a very crowded drop-off area. About 1/3 of the curb space was unavailable due to construction, so gridlock.  We hopped out of the car in the midst of a construction zone and walked underneath scaffolding into the terminal.

Check-in was quick and easy and we were sitting at gate A12 by 720P playing games on our tablets prior to our 835P boarding.

This terminal was very noisy with constant unintelligible announcements echoing off the high ceiling. Boarding actually began about 10 minutes earlier than expected – we were actually in our seats by 835P, sipping Prosecco.

Boarding complete    903P (PDT) / 503A (GMT)

Start taxi                 911P / 511A

Line up &wait at 1R   927P / 527A

Takeoff                    930P / 530A

Snacks                    950P / 550A

Dinner                    1040P / 640A    Water and canned rose for both of us

Clean-up                 1125P / 725A

Coffee service          1130P / 730A

Lights out                1155P / 755A

Bathroom visit         4A/11A          Get apple juice, butter cookies from Wander Wall

Fidgeting                 410A/ 1110A  1~5-20% of pax starting to wakeup/fidget

We’re just approaching the coast of Maine about now, about to cross the Atlantic. Looks like we’re targeting the southern tip of England rather than crossing further north over Ireland.

Lights on                 628A / 128P

Breakfast                648A / 148P

Landing at LHR        813A / 313P

My screen’s USB port was non-functional, but fortunately the AC power outlet underneath my seat went live once we hit 10K feet so I was able to keep my tablet on AC throughout the flight. As promised by the research, our seats in the back row were awesome. We kept reclined the whole way.

Monday, 25 August 2025: Landing in London and Our Hotel

Location at End of Day...London, baby!

One thing I had obsessed about was how to most efficiently get from LHR to our hotel. I was concerned about managing our luggage in the Underground stations. While I knew that the Charing Cross Underground station was our “closest” station, I had confirmed early on that this station is so old that it basically has TONS of stairs rather than escalators – and that concerned me.

I started my research by putting out some questions on CC. A few people suggested that instead of exiting at Charing Cross that we instead continue onward to the Embankment station. However, it still wasn’t clear to me that using Embankment would REALLY solve our concerns. Ultimately, I found a video on YouTube showing a walkthrough of the station. Near the end of the video I was able to specifically see the camera walking the exact path from the platform we’d arrive at all the way up to the street – and it showed that, other than a single 2-step stairway, the entire vertical distance would use escalators. Once at street level we’d have to walk about 4-5 minutes along Villiers Street to the hotel entrance. With that info known we could take the (nice and comfy) Elizabeth Line from LHR to Tottenham Court Road, take a (flat) walk and escalator to transfer over to the Northern Line and, ultimately, end up at Embankment Station.

Although I didn’t use it during the planning stages, I did find this interesting geographically correct version of the London transit map in July 25. And this version based on concentric circles that is surprisingly easy to understand!

FWIW: In April 2025, someone on CC mentioned “axonometric drawings” of the Underground stations in a post. Following up on this I came across an INCREDIBLE resource of 3D drawings of Underground stations that showed stairs, escalators, and so forth. While not 100% to scale, this did confirm what I’d seen in the video, above. In particular, I noted that the video showed a long walk to get to what appears to be Escalator 7 at Embankment, even though the (closer) Escalator 10 also shows that it goes to the ticket hall. However, there’s a longer staircase at the TOP of Escalator 10 compared to the shorter staircase at the BOTTOM of Escalator 7 (which must equate to the 2 steps I saw in the video). So we COULD take the closer Escalator 10 – but there’s a risk that the staircase at the top of that escalator might be 4-5 steps – and perhaps more. Of course, it could also be just 2 steps!

And speaking of steps….(oh, what a segue).

Like so many others, I was curious as to which route planning app would be best to use: Google Maps, Citymapper, or TfL GO. Some online research made it clear that there was a pretty even split between Google Maps and Citymapper – with TfL being considered an also-ran. I decided that I needed to form my own opinions, so I did my own testing, using a fictional trip from The Museum of the Home to The Clermont Hotel, starting at 4P on a random Thursday “in the future”. I was counting clicks and noting how many steps certain processes took, what information was presented (and when, and how effectively), and also did a bunch of screen-capping and jotted down my notes, but my ultimate takeaway was as follows.

I liked the user experience of working with Citymapper for almost everything…but the ONE THING they do sub-optimally is something that is pretty important to me. Citymapper buries info about how much walking a route choice includes until one step later in the route selection process than Google Maps does:



Google, on the right, shows that the first route that I could choose involves 10 minutes of walking at the end. At the same point in the selection process, Citymapper, on the left, hasn’t yet exposed that info. Citymapper won’t show you the 10-minute walk until the NEXT screen.

I like EVERYTHING ELSE about working with Citymapper compared to Google Maps, so this is quite frustrating! Citymapper is showing me more choices (5 vs 2.5) on the screen, including several that will arrive before the “most suggested” route, and doesn’t clutter the screen with a map showing a path that ultimately doesn’t matter. (I’m selecting based on start and end, not the things in the middle, so the map is not critical info.)

After waffling back and forth, I ultimately decided to use Citymapper and accept the extra clicks.

And, like most of the rest of the internet, I thought TfL GO’s UX and UI was a joke. There wasn’t a single thing they did better than one of the competitors. Further, TfL GO fails to return MANY route choices that are significantly better than those they do decide to offer. Example: Google and CM both offered me the 243 bus at 4:03. TfL offered the 4:19 bus (also ignoring the 4:09 bus, too)! Pathetic.

Staying on the topic of phone use, here’s a sign of change. Last time we went to the UK I added international plans to our Verizon phones, which cost us around $25/line. This time around? $100/line!

I tried something new this trip related to computer gear. On prior trips I’ve gone back and forth between taking only the tablet + keyboard vs also bringing my laptop. The laptop with its large screen is so much more natural for me – but it does add several pounds that weighs down the backpack, plus it is one more device that competes for a network connection onboard.

This time I left the laptop at home but added a Bluetooth mouse to sit alongside the BT keyboard. I also added a USB C to HDMI hub (with a charging port plus a couple of USB ports) that I plugged into my phone. With this combo and Samsung Dex (which I first discovered in April 2025) I could use my phone as a poor-man’s laptop – as long as I can connected to a TV either wirelessly (unlikely when traveling) or via HDMI, which was a decent probability. If I could connect, the TV would act as my large screen monitor, and Dex would offer a more desktop-like experience from my phone including multiple, resizable windows running Android apps. So I’d be able to web browse and use Microsoft Office apps ON THE PHONE but interact with real keyboard and mouse on a large format monitor. If it didn’t work then I would have to move the KB and mouse over to my tablet and use the apps there, displaying on the tablet’s screen. I would have loved to use my tablet for the Samsung Dex use-case, but sadly the budget-friendly Tab A7 Lite doesn’t support Dex.

Once we arrived at LHR we made the trek from the terminal to baggage claim. Our bags were on the carousel within 5 minutes of our arrival in the baggage hall, so we then made our way to the Elizabeth Line, made the change to Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road (accidentally getting on the wrong train and having to make a switch to the correct direction at the Goodge Street station) so we could finally exit at Embankment. The walk up to street level was a simple as the video led us to believe, and in hot 78 degree weather we walked up Villiers Street and were checking into the Clermont by 440P.

The mass of people on Villiers Street was a real surprise to me. During pre-trip research I’d often looked at Google Street View of the area. All the photos there dated from the lockdown period during the pandemic, and as such showed very little life. In normal circumstances, however, the area is absolutely seething with people. Loved it!

On our way to our room up the elevator (they had two, but one of them was unavailable the entire stay as it was being renovated, leading to some long wait times for the elevator to arrive)

We met a couple from Sacramento where the husband had a lot of Larry Byler energy. In our quite comfortable room, chilled Asti Spumante and chocolate cake awaited us.

We opened the Asti and put the cake in the in-room mini-bar (where we never touched it). The mini-bar contents were all free for us, and the water, diet Coke, and milk chocolate bar were something we grabbed daily. I stockpiled the chocolate bars for later eating. We both took a sponge bath to wipe the travel sweat off of us.

Our hotel room (room 533 on the 5th floor) overlooked Charing Cross Rail Station, which itself sits on top of Charing Cross Underground station.

The experiment of using VS42 outbound instead of VS20 turned out to be very successful. Our energy was good post-landing and we were able to power through the rest of the day with minimal fatigue. We even felt good enough at 620P that we walked through Victoria Embankment Gardens. This day was apparently a bank holiday and there were a TON of people out and about on this gorgeous day. Folks walking around, sitting on the lawns, sunning themselves, eating at the open air restaurants. Just so much energy everywhere!

Upon entry to the park you pass the old York Watergate. Prior to construction of the Embankment in 1862 (underneath which new sewage lines took waste far down the Thames rather than simply dumping into the river at this point) the Watergate sat immediately next to the water.

Walked over to the D’Oyly Carte memorial (just outside the back of the Savoy Hotel) and the Arthur Sullivan memorial (ditto),

then returned to Villiers and ate dinner at Hobson’s Fish & Chips. I’d selected this as kind of a “throwaway” meal, figuring that we’d be pretty tired and perhaps feeling a bit logy and not ready to enjoy better food. We were actually both hungrier than expected and ended up each getting an order of fish along with a shared plate of chips, plus a salad for E. Another positive side effect of using VS42 as our flight.  

We took note of Amorino, a gelato store on Villiers that we’d take advantage of on several subsequent nights, but on this first night we went back to the hotel and watched random stuff on Dave TV. At 845P I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, so I took a shower and then lounged in the nice plush hotel robe until we both got into bed around 10P.

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