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:
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 4:35PRevised 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 / 520ATakeoff 945P / 545ASnack + drink 1025P / 625ADinner + 2nd drink 1055P / 655A3rd drink 1155P / 755ALights out 1210A / 810ALights on (110 pre-land) 500A / 100PBreakfast (90 pre-land) 520A / 120PLanding 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!
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.
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.
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),
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 / 511ALine up &wait at 1R 927P / 527ATakeoff 930P / 530ASnacks 950P / 550ADinner 1040P / 640A Water and canned rose for both of usClean-up 1125P / 725ACoffee service 1130P / 730ALights out 1155P / 755ABathroom visit 4A/11A Get apple juice, butter cookies from Wander WallFidgeting 410A/ 1110A 1~5-20% of pax starting to wakeup/fidgetWe’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 / 128PBreakfast 648A / 148PLanding 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!
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!
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| 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.
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.
