Woohoo, it is holiday time again, this time to London, Paris and then a Cruise. This was a group holiday, myself, Bhavik’s, Vikash’s and Balia’s (from the 24/09/18) families were doing this together.

Had been a crazy week leading to this date, with Neha and Pooja both still at schools and exams till the last day of travel, not much time to get too excited with the holidays and also packing was left to the last minute literally, I got back from work on Thursday afternoon and then it was a mad rush to finalise packing and what things to take.

Dinner was at mums places, she had prepared Pooja’s favourite – gosht! Mum was adamant we have the last home cooked meal at her place. As always her food is super, kids loved it!Just after 7:50pm, Dilesh took us to the airport.
Vikash was already there when we arrived. This was really happening.

Checkin process was super slow, another 40+mins to waste and then finally down the immigration hall.

Pooja took the same pose she did late last year during our Dubai/India holiday, I had to join in,

Bhavik & family also caught up with us in the departures areas, from there kids were all together having a blast – finally getting super excited for these holidays.

(Ladies busy browsing the duty free area).

Time to board the flights, Bhavik was travelling on THAI airways, whilst me and Vikash were on Malaysian airlines. Next meetup with Bhavik will be tomorrow in London.

Our first leg of the flight was to KL, flight time of around 8.5 hours. We arrived in KL around 5:50am, a 4 hour transit and then the long 13.5 hour leg to London. Flight went smoothly but I had major problems falling asleep in the KL to London leg.

It was a long and tiring flight, finally made it to London at 16:40pm on the 14th of Sept. In 1998 when I had last visited London, I had very bad memories of the extremely slow processing of the immigration counters and the long lines. Well this time around, London ensured they maintained the same level of experience! The lines were super long, took us over one hour to be processed through immigration!

Next to collect our bags and quickly out through customs. Our hotel transfers was waiting for us in the arrivals hall. It was peak hour, took us just over an hour to reach our hotel – the Holiday Inn at Mayfair. Hotel was very good, all settled in our room, now to get some dinner (Bhavik’s flight was landing close to 7pm, so no need to wait for him).

Hotel staff recommended a nice Italian place close by, it was the Boccochino,  Stepping outside, it was much cooler than Brisbane, time to put on some additional layers of clothing.

Boccochino, whilst very classy with the best ambience, did lack in the quality of food we were used to. Still enough to get us started. We all hit the bed early to catchup on some much needed sleep, tomorrow was the start of our touring!