The View Across South London from our Hotel
Editor’s Note: This is the second part in a week long series about our fantastic trip to England last week. If you’d like to see the rest of the posts about our journey, click here.
Every time I’ve landed in London, I’ve always had to get off the plane on the tarmac, pile into a bus and drive to the terminal, which was old, dingy and usually involved a lot of walking. It was never a pleasant experiece – especially after being on a plane for 8 hours.
So, the last few times I was in England, there was a massive construction project going on to build Terminal 5 – a new terminal dedicated to all British Airways traffic. It cost £5 billion and was Britain’s largest construction project. A few years ago, when you taxied to leave, you always got a glimpse of it being built.
The building is a beautiful modern design with massive glass walls under the world’s largest single span ceiling. As a geek who appreciates such things, I could not wait to pass through Terminal 5 for the first time.
After we landed, something happened that had never happened before on my travels to Britain – the plane actually pulled up to the Terminal and let us off. No bus, no ridiculous amounts of walking. We got off the plane and sailed through immigration and we’d arrived in London. Terminal 5 was amazingly beautiful. It was everything I hoped it would be. Sadly, I did not take any pictures as you’re not supposed to do that inside an airport these days. Terminal 5 had a bad rap after it opened, but it’s a smooth running operation now and it’s a beatiful building to behold.
One of the biggest hassles when traveling to Britain is getting into central London from Heathrow, all options are expensive. Thankfully, this time British Airways provided us buses to get us into Central London to the Park Lane Hilton, where the rest of the day’s events were to be held.
By the time we got on the buses, the sun had finally come up and we had the pleasure of getting into Central London on the M4 during rush hour. It took about an hour – but we didn’t mind, the scenery was fabulous and the route took us through some of my favorite London neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, at this time I was quite hungry and ready for breakfast and my stomach was doing summersaults from the bus ride, the airplane food and the other junk I’d eaten in the last 12 hours. That combined with jetlag – I was not a pleasant person to be around during those initial hours in London.
I needed tea and I needed it STAT.
Once we got to the Park Lane Hilton, we were able to quickly check our bags and partake in a delicious traditional English breakfast that was waiting for us. By this point in time, our body clocks thought it was 4am and we’d had no sleep. As with most people on the plane, we were the walking dead.
The breakfast was delicious and hit the spot perfectly and we waited for the speeches to begin. We were in the the conference rooms at the Park Lane Hilton and they were nicely appointed. Outside the window was a view of Hyde Park – the leaves still on the trees and a Union Jack blowing in the wind off in the distance.
It was quite surreal at that moment to realize that we were in London. We were in the place I’d been working to hard to get to. It was a dream I didn’t want to wake up from.
The first speaker on deck was Sir Clive Woodward – who is the Director of Olympic Performance for the British Olympic association. Sir Clive is most famous for leading England’s national Rugby team to victory in the World Cup.
Sir Clive had a very interesting speech – he talked about what makes a successful athlete and how that can be applied to the business world. His basic premise is that it’s not enough to just be talented at something. You have to hone that talent with education, perserverance and discipline. You should spend just as much time studying your craft as you are performing it. I really enjoyed Sir Clive’s speech as what he had to say is something I very much believe in – you are capable of doing anything as long as you have talent, drive and perserverance.
Without all that, I wouldn’t have been sitting in that very room!
My favorite catchphrase from Sir Clive was T-CUP – which is having total control under pressure – it’s not enough to be great at something, you have to perform well and in control when you are hit with the most pressure. When you’re under the most pressure – that’s when you truly show how good you are at something. It’s a great analogy and I’ll definitely be spreading it on.
After Sir Clive Woodward spoke, it was the turn of Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham’s to speak.
Lord Digby was a fantastic speaker and he talked about a range of subjects including, his time working for the British Government and UK Trade and Investment, the relationshop between the US and the UK, he also threw in some history and many interesting anecdotes – even even brought up The War. It was a very enjoyable speech – it’s a shame I was having trouble staying awake or else I would have enjoyed it more.
There was a third speaker – Andrew Sherman, but we didn’t see him speak and I don’t think many others did either. After Lord Digby was done, there was a short break and we decided to see if our hotel room was ready because we were quite ready for a nap.
Our room was ready, we grabbed our bags and headed up. The room was phenominal – very happy to stay there for two nights. We had an incredible view across the South of London and the room was spacious, had a flat screen tv, luxurious bathroom – it was perfect. We were only able to stay there because BA provided a free night and we got a discount for our second night.
We shut the curtains and set our alarms for two hours and got some sleep, intending to wake up with enough time to make it to the swanky cocktail hour at the Orangery at Kensington Palace at 4.
Well, the good news was that the two hour nap was enough to reset our body clocks and get us refreshed. After a quick bath and a change, we decided that in order to make the most of our trip to London we would not attend the cocktail hour. In retrospect, I regretted this after I found out that Lord Alan Sugar spoke.
Oxford Street
After we were refreshed, we hailed a cab and headed for the Apple Store for some free Wifi. We had been disconnected from the internet for quite some time and it was time to see what was going on in the world back home. After the Apple Store, we did a spot of shopping, ate some dinner at one of my favorite restaruants – Garfunkel’s. We admired the Christmas lights and window shopped through the stores on Oxford Street and I picked up some delicious cookies from Ben’s Cookies. It was a magical London evening and the perfect start to our quick trip to Blighty.
When we got back to the room to turn in for the night, we watched some British Telly and fell asleep at a pretty early hour. It had been a long journey but it had been fantastic.
I must hand it to British Airways for planning such a wonderful event on both sides of the Atlantic. There were no hiccups and we got the Royal treatment. My only regret is that I didn’t get a chance to meet Simon Talling-Smith – the North American VP of Operations for BA – in person and thank him for the wonderful opportunity and the excellent service. I e-mailed him after the trip – but as the whole point of the trip was face to face interaction – it’s just not the same. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon and this is the start of a wonderful relationship with British Airways.
Come back tomorrow for the tale of our whirlwind day seeing the London sights with our Disptaches from the North Columnist Lisa Coulson.
About Jonathan
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Anglotopia was founded by Jonathan and Jackie Thomas for people who love Britain - whether it's British TV, Culture, History or Travel - we cover it all. Anglotopia was started to get us back to the UK for a trip and it did that in 2009. Now, the goal is for Anglotopia to make our dreams of traveling to the UK whenever we want a reality.
