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Trip to Europe (Cruise and holiday in London)


Boringchap
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Just got back.  I will share videos of my recent holiday here. Privileged and blessed to be able to travel and see the world with the family.  Awesome trip.  For this trip, the plan was to take a cruise out of Genoa, Italy.  The problem was that Genoa was pretty hard to get to.  So, to get there, we first flew to London, stayed one night, then flew from London Stansted to Genoa via Ryanair, stayed on night in Genoa, then boarded the ship for a 7N cruise covering ports like Civitavecchia (for Rome), Palermo, Malta, Marseilles, Barcelona (not in that order). On disembarkation day, we took British Airways flight back from Genoa to Gatwick, and spent some nights in London before heading home.  That, in gist, was the plan.

 

The rest of this thread, I will post videos (probably in random order).

 

First day in London, arrived quite early, went for a walk.   Here were some aggressive ducks in London Regent's Park.

 

The Triton Fountain,  also at London Regent's Park. Very bright and quite cool, around 11 deg. 

 

A boy feeding pigeons.  Quite fun.

Edited by Boringchap
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(edited)

This year, we tried something different.  As a family, we like to cruise, but we have yet to try the cruise line called MSC and neither have we been to Genoa.

 
So this was the plan.  We would sail with the cruise ship called MSC Preziosa.  The idea came about sometime last year when we were surfing around various cruise websites and reading various cruise reviews and discovered something called the MSC Yacht Club.  The product looked interesting enough to be worth a try, and we booked ourselves for a 7N cruise out of Genoa on the MSC Preziosa.
 
Now, it turned out that getting to Genoa was not that straightforward, at least for somebody from Singapore!  Genoa is a minor international airport and the connectivity isn't great.   Since we wanted to spend some time in London pre and post cruise, we decided to fly to London.  So our route to Genoa was as follows.
 
Singapore to London on Singapore Airlines.  The SQ flight landed in the morning. Then we stayed one night at Premier Inn King's Cross.  The very next day, we would make our way to Stansted Airport (via the Tube and then the Stansted Express from Tottenham Hale), to catch a RyanAir flight into Genoa.  We would land in Genoa in the evening, and stay for one night at the Holiday Inn Genoa, before getting on the cruise ship.  That was the plan. 
 
Everything worked perfectly. Thank God!  I start with the flight from Singapore to London. Here is the flight review video.
 
Part 1
 
Part 2
 
Breakfast was outstanding because of the hot item. The dish had a fancy Thai name, but it was essentially rice noodles, with chicken, squid, egg and chinese greens.  The taste was awesome!  Like what I could get in a good restaurant.  Loved it.
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We landed on time at Heathrow and our adventure would begin.
 
As a family we have travelled to London quite a number of times in recent years.  I also go to London for business, now and then.  So London is quite familiar to us. SQ lands at Terminal 2, the relatively new Star Alliance terminal.

 


A picture of the terminal soon after we disembarked.  

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Heathrow is usually very crowded.  No different when we arrived.  The immigration line looked very long, but fortunately it moved fairly quickly.  I think we waited about 20 minutes in line.  Immigration clearance was smooth.  The officer was quite friendly and asked a few questions based on what I had declared in our landing cards.  I noticed they usually ask me some random question(s).  I count it our good fortune what we speak good English and for that we have to thank our founding Prime Minister the late Lee Kuan Yew (who was educated at Cambridge) and his team of pioneer Ministers who lead our little country to independence back in 1965.  Being able to speak confidently in English certainly helps.   My kids could speak to the immigration officer in English too.
 
Anyway, once we cleared immigration, it was a very short wait at the baggage and soon all our baggage arrived.  We got out of the airport to the arrivals area and our first stop (after toilets) would be some place to eat.   This is because the kids and wife would usually be hungry as they don't eat well on the plane.  
 
So we took a nice break at this Cafe Nero, in the arrivals hall (public area) of Heathrow Terminal 2.  Had some hot food and coffee.  The kids ate up all their pasta!
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Short video of Cafe Nero
 
Thereafter, we took the Tube into London. Our kids travel free on the Tube, with us paying adults.  Both of us have Oyster cards, with sufficient value from previous trips.  That helped because the line to buy the Oyster cards or top up the card was very long!  It was just a short walk to the Underground Tube station (can't remember exactly how long, but likely around 10 minutes max).  It helps a lot for our family that we pack fairly light and also we get luggages that have sturdy wheels. Very helpful because we tend to push our luggage around a lot.  We get each kid to look after one hand-carry and each adult takes care of one check-in bag.   Just 2 check in and 2 hand carry bags for the four of us.  We each have a small carry-on like a backpack.
 
We love the Tube.  It is full of character.  More importantly, it is a cheap way to get into London from Heathrow and it is fairly quick too.   This time round, we need to get to King's Cross, as we would be staying at a Premier Inn there for one night.  The journey was easy.  Take the Piccadilly Line (blue colour) from Heathrow all the way to King's Cross.  One line, no need to change.  Awesome. And because we board at Heathrow, seats are almost guaranteed.  Journey took about an hour.  
 
From the station, again a short walk to the Premier Inn.  Check-in would be after 2pm so we were there early (I think we got there by 11am).  So we deposited our luggage and went out for a walk.  

 


 

 


Our first stop was to go to Regent's Park, London.  We love the parks in London and it was good to take a walk and enjoy the fresh air.  The sun was shining!   For navigation, nowadays I use an iphone app called CityMaps2Go.  It does not require a data connection but you have to download the maps of the city before hand.  With the GPS on the phone, it can tell you your precise location and then you can navigate from there.  Very easy.  Never get lost again.

 

To get to Regent's Park, we had to take a tube to Baker Street and then walk from there.  It was a beautiful sunny day, temperature around 11 deg.

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The park was very pretty in the sun.

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The Triton fountain the background.

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Another picture of the park.

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Pleasantly surprised to find some nice flowers and green trees and grass in the park.  This was December.  I guess the climate in London isn't too harsh. Thankfully!

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Edited by Boringchap
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PHOENIX PALACE

 

Soon it was time for lunch.  The plan was to head to a Chinese restaurant called Phoenix Palace, which was very near Baker Street Tube station.  The website of this restaurant - http://www.phoenixpalace.co.uk/  This restaurant has existed since at least we were students in London, so coming back here was good.  It was just a short walk from Regent's Park. 

 
Here is the video of the food we ate. We had some Dim Sum (including Cheong Fun, Lor Mai Kai, also the crispy aromatic duck, porridge, plus beef hor fun)
 
A rather large mural display in the restaurant.
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A glimpse of the menu. 
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The restaurant was rather large.  Quiet when we got there (they just opened) but more and more people started to stream in, during lunch hours. 
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The dried beef hor fun (rice noodles) which was very tasty indeed.
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After the very tasty lunch, jet lag certainly started to set in!  We slowly made our way back to King's Cross station, via the Tube.  We didn't want to sleep too early, so we continued to explore the King's Cross and St Pancras station, which was rather large.  Many train services, plenty of passengers passing through.  This is where I saw this very large Christmas tree, made of Disney characters. Quite a sight indeed!
 

 


Soon, it was time to get back to the hotel, check-in and get some rest.  The kids were tired, and they had done very well, keeping awake till late afternoon.  So we made our way back to the Premier Inn at King's Cross.  Now, Premier Inn is our favorite budget chain in London and we almost always stay there when we visit London as a family.  It is of tremendous value for us because we can get family rooms which has adequate bedding for the four of us.  On average, we usually pay around 80 pounds (about 120USD) per night, sometimes even less.   After this stint, I would have stayed at Premier Inn for 23 nights.
 
This is the video I made of the Family room that we stayed in.  
 
A picture of the bed for the adults. 
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And the toilet.
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We didn't eat out that evening.  Just bought some sandwiches and coffee.  Good night.
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How time flies.  From the time I started this thread (and didn't complete), we've now gone to Europe (London) for holiday and back again.   So I will just continue to put content here, may be a bit random.

 

This time round we visited the Foyles Bookshop . It was a gorgeous place.

 

UK is heading towards a referendum in a couple of weeks for Brexit - the issue is whether they should stay or leave the EU.  Very important question.

 

 

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Eating in London is not too expensive, given that prices in Singapore have gone up by so much over the years and also the fact that the UK Pound has dropped a lot from a few years ago.  Now, 1 GBP is worth less than 2 SGD.  10 to 15 years back, it was 1 GBP to 3 SGD.

 

We enjoy the many interesting eateries they have.  We find these places through google and blogs and other online reviews.

 

On our way to Hampton Court Palace, we passed Wimbledon, which is Zone 3 west london.  Near the Tube station, there was this japanese eatery called Oki where we had some lunch sets.

 

Starbucks coffee isn't too expensive either. I think cheaper in UK than in Singapore.  This giant Latte cost 3.1GBP.

 

When in London, we look for good places to have Lobster Noodle.  Turns out that we like this place, Young Cheng (in Chinatown), better than the more famous Mandarin Kitchen.   This is the Young Cheng at Lisle Street.  There was another Young Cheng near the Les Miz theatre which is now closed, sadly. 

 

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