October 2011 - London and Barcelona

Did you know that Emirates feeds you the same amount of times on a 14 hour flight and a 7 hour flight? Two food runs and a drink run in the middle, and on a seven hour flight that feels a little tight. Sure you are on the plane at 745am, so 2nd breakfast is served at 845am (2nd being because the last meal on the Sydney flight is also breakfast), then they serve lunch to you at what would be 1245pm Dubai time which is really 1045am London time. Even without my usual run to Maccas at Dubai airport that’s a lot of food, too much, since I didn’t have lunch.

But after about 26 hours of travelling time we were dropped smoothly (and very quickly) into Paddington station by the Heathrow Express. I think the longest wait we had was for a cab but that meant enough time to see all the London buses driving past. Ah, our first taste of London.

Our second taste of London was arriving at the lush Four Seasons on Park Lane. Now this place had a complete refurb and only reopened about a year ago and WOW, what a difference. You can see the money put into this Hotel in every fixture, feature and piece of furniture. Even the hallways to the rooms leave you with a certain WOW—I think I’m going to use that word a lot here.

The room is shiny, all the woodwork in the room has a reflective surface. Poor housekeeping I thought when I saw this room, so many surface to leave fingerprints all over, including the sliding bathroom door which is a two-sided mirror from ground to ceiling and the edges? Oh yes, don’t forget them, are stainless steel. MORE FINGERPRINTS!

So it was about 2pm and the decision needed to be made… Stick it out, go out and sleep after dinner or sleep now? Pfft. Like we are going to waste an opportunity to look at some shops. We walked the busy New Bond Street and Oxford Streets, stopping off at Selfridges so Jonno could replace his falling apart Converse and I could oogle the perfect pair of open toe heels for work—That’s Oogle, not buy people. There were people everywhere including a bunch of teenage boys that must have had money to burn on New Bond Street as they were all carrying some small designer bag with them.

After Selfridges we looked at our watches and decided we could walk around for another hour before we needed to head back to the Hotel but I think the draw of the Hotel room was too great by that time and we turned up a side street and 15mins later we were back in our Hotel room. Great shower, warm fluffy robe, you don’t know how hard it was to a) stay awake and b) get dressed for dinner.

But we did make it to dinner, even though we only saw it as a means to an end—and that end was sleep. Jonno had Black Truffle Ravioli—which was beautiful. I stuck to a simple Spag with tomato and basil, still great. Oh and dessert was a Six Sins Chocolate Dessert. The most amazing piece on the plate was the chocolate ball—just smaller than a tennis ball, and when you pour the hot chocolate sauce on the top it melts away and at the centre is cream and berries. Pretty spectacular.

830pm. Sleep. We didn’t make it any further than that.