Friday, June 16: Stopover in London.

Our flight was relatively painless aside from the fact that the guy in the window seat seemed to pee more than I do.

 We arrived in London at 6:15AM (1:15AM EDT)`and set about running errands in the airport.  First, we updated our Oyster cards for our travels with Axel and family the following weekend. Then we went from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 (which involved a 4-minute train ride) to check in for Saturday's flight. British Air charges if you pick your seats more than 24 hours in advance, so I waited until exactly 24 hours and then checked in and got our seats.  It was now 8:15AM, and we got some pounds and headed toward the buses.  It took about 10 minutes to get from Terminal 5 to our hotel. I will now remember that the Sofitel Hotel is the one IN Terminal 5 for next year!

We were actually able to get into our room at 9:30AM, so we took naps.

Bob is still sleeping right now, but when my hair dries, I'll wake him up.  Windsor Castle isn't too far from here, so maybe we'll check it out.

We decided to have an easy day and just walk to a nearby Thai food restaurant that we had passed on our way to the hotel.  It is a lovely day in the UK, so we sat outside and had delicious Thai food with French and Belgian beer.

Afterwards, we had coffee al fresco at our hotel (accompanied by planes taking off every 10 minutes or so from Heathrow).

https://youtu.be/IJIDFW-e8ow

After I took a shower, I realized that I couldn’t use my European curling iron because I didn’t have an adapter for Europe to U.K.!! I dried and curled with a brush as best I could.  On our next trip to the lobby, I was able to borrow an adapter from the concierge.

After a walk around the hotel, including a little glade of apple trees with mowed walkway and multiple videos of really low airplanes taking off from Heathrow, we went back to the room to get ready for dinner.  I finalized packing as much as possible so that we could just go to bed after our evening meal.

The restaurant choice for the evening was Mr. Todiwala’s Kitchen, which just happened to be in our hotel.  The décor reminded us of Indian Summers, a fascinating TV series we’d watched on PBS.  I decided to try multiple small plates so that we could enjoy the various flavors of nouveau Indian cuisine. Every dish was wonderful – we mixed vegetarian entries with shrimp and chicken.
The menu was a little biography of the chef and the different elements of the cuisine.  It was so helpful and interesting.

 After dinner, we went right to bed in preparation for an early rising for the next day’s flight to Hannover.

We were awakened after our lovely dinner by the front desk.  Because the restaurant was really busy when we were ready to leave, I just signed for the meal using the room number in the hotel, but because I prepaid for the room, they had no record of my credit card.  So at 10:00PM, I had to get dressed and go to the lobby to give the staff my credit card.  Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well for most of the night.  It took me at least 1 ½ hours to get to sleep, and then Bob woke me up because he was cold, so we had to fiddle with the thermostat.  Arrgggh,