ballet — Home Organization Insights — San Diego Professional Home Organizer

Natalie and I recently returned from the United Kingdom on 3/15 during the happenings of COVID-19. What was planned to be a 10 day trip got cut a little short and a few countries that we intended on visiting were skipped due to changing circumstances. We made the most out of our short journey and got to experience great culture, historical aspects, and many consumable items. I think this medium is a great spot to document the experience of what was planned versus what we actually did with some photos and insights of each day!

The Planning Phase

Back in October 2019 I had another itch to do a trip over the Atlantic Ocean after my month long Europe trip in 2016 that brought me to Ireland, Romania, Chez Republic, and France. Natalie had never been overseas before and it was a priority for her to go to Paris and other spots in Europe. I was monitoring Scott’s Cheap Flights prior to this time for low cost opportunities to get my behind in an 10+ hour airplane seat once again. We were in luck at the end of October as round trips from Los Angeles to London in the sub 400’s had come up. I talked to Natalie and found her availability which was about 2 weeks in March or sometime in May. Her birthday was also March 15 and would be during this duration and what better way to spend a birthday than in Europe and hopefully Paris! On October 24, we made the booking to depart March 10 and return March 20 (which is the day i’m typing this).

Over the next few months some ideas were thrown around of where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see. I was pretty open to most attractions and destinations. Natalie’s high priority was to see the Paris Opera Ballet perform George Balanchine at the Opera Bastille on March 14. Tickets to the show were acquired February 11 and gave us a baseline of how to plan around this. Another big show that she wanted to see was the Royal Ballet performing Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in London March 12. After some discussion with peers who have traveled before we decided on visiting Amsterdam after Paris. After booking all the train tickets our city schedule looked like this

London: March 11- March 13

Paris: March 13 - March 17

Amsterdam: March 17 - March 19

London: March 19 - 20

With that notional schedule in mind, I was able to fill in a day to day itinerary spreadsheet with attractions from each city around ticketed events and add in time for shopping and leisure. See screenshot below for our “working schedule”

As we got closer to our trip COVID-19 was becoming more of a concern but no travel advisories were in place yet besides Italy. France was taking precautions at some monuments by only allowing online ticket purchasers to enter the facilities. With that in mind, I pre-purchased tickets to most of the places we wanted to see in both Paris and London. London at this time still had no restrictions at all.

The Journey (from the time zone we were in)

March 10 - Tuesday

It was March 10 the day of our departure; we had everything ready to roll to LAX and start the trip. We departed San Diego for the airport around noon just to account for some traffic and buffer time to make our 7:30 pm flight. After getting to the airport we were able to relax for a few hours in the Korean Airline Lounge at the International Terminal and reflect on the adventure we were about to have. We boarded our flight and off we went. I spent most of the flight taking many mini naps while jamming out to some pre-downloaded tunes on my phone. Natalie ended up watching a few movies.

March 11 - Wednesday

We landed in London an hour early at 1 pm! We navigated the tube to our hotel on the London West End.

After riding the tube for the first time it really makes you think about how horrible public transportation is all over California. In most cases out there its quicker to hop on the tube to get to your destination rather than a car or taxi. You don’t have to plan times very much as the trains come every few minutes for almost all routes making connections easy in the same underground stations. All payments can be done through Apple Pay also so you don’t need to keep track of a decreasing balance on a pre-paid card.

After getting to the Double Tree West End hotel, we were upgraded to a King Premier Deluxe room with my Hilton Diamond status from originally a standard double room. Score! The room was remodeled recently and reminded me of a standard upscale American hotel room. I heard that hotel rooms were tiny in London so this was a surprise to me. After being on a plane for hours, it was time to clean up and head on out. After some polling around for spots to have afternoon tea - Fortnum and Mason made the cut as the one we would go to. Natalie’s friend Karin was in town and decided to meet up for tea also. We made a quick stop to the Freed ballet store on the way to Tea to snag some goodies for the ballet lover.

After tea was over, we decided to see some sights such as Big Ben, House of Parliament, and the London Eye. Seeing these landmarks in the dark for the first time was pretty neat.

Westminster Abbey (closed at night) - 3/11/20

The next stop was to find a pub to have a drink at. The first one we walked across and entered was called the Silver Cross which had many great real ales on cask.

Another highly recommended pub was Brew Dog SoHo which we headed over to afterwards. I love this spot. They had so many great tasting beers on draft from the UK and other parts of the world. The food was on point too.

What a great first day in London! After returning to the hotel room we looked up current events around the world. France was in the phase of starting to cancel events for the next few days but the performance on March 14 that we had booked was still on the schedule. The best course of action at the time was to just get some rest and re-assess day by day.

March 12

Sticking to the original plan, we woke up extra early and headed to the Tower of London for the 9 am opening! The first display we went to here were the Crown Jewels from the royal family. They had ALL the good stuff especially historical crowns and scepters. After seeing the jewels we scoped out the white castle that had armor and weapon displays. The Tower of London had so many exhibits that every time you entered one it put you further away from the exit! From certain vantage points in the tower, you can also see the world famous Tower Bridge also.

White Tower at Tower of London - 3/12/20

The next stop on the journey was Sky Garden. Sky Garden is one of the worlds highest gardens on top of a high rise building. From the top of the garden, you can get a high up 360 degree view of London. There were also cafes and bars for people to spend an extended period of time here.

One of Natalie’s favorite “hobbies” is shopping - this meant a trip to the world famous department store Harrods in Knightsbridge. This is hands down the biggest store I’ve ever seen with 6 levels of shops over an entire square block. If you combined 2 huge malls into one store, this is what you get. The most fascinating thing was each clothing designer or brand had their own mini section within the shops where you could get service on-demand unlike in the US where one person covers an entire section of the store.

Hours of “shopping” left us hungry and we wanted to try some authentic British fish and chips. A quick Google search brought us to Golden Union Fish Bar where they proceed to serve us a whole fish fillet. I was totally expecting little fish bites. The food was delicious!

The nighttime had the Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake in store for our view pleasure at the Royal Opera House after a pregame drink at Punch and Judy around the corner. Our seats were in the amphitheater which gave some great sight lines of the stage. The performance was one of the best ballet performances I have seen where the dancers were synchronized like robots and the movements and choreography were nicely done.

Royal Opera House for Swan Lake - 3/12/20

When we got home from the performance, thats when events in the United States started to unfold where travel from Europe back to the US announced (excluding the UK). It seemed liked France would be one of the next countries that would start closing non-essential services and go on lock down. We were supposed to hop on a Eurostar train the next day to head to Paris to continue the journey. In light of events, we decided to not proceed to Paris and rebook our return flights for Sunday 3/15 while this was still an available option. We would get to spend 2 more full days in London and then head back home ahead of the planned schedule.

March 13

Waking up in the morning, we learned that France closed down all museums and monuments. The Paris Opera ballet performance was also cancelled in light of recent events. There was a sense of relief that we had not continued our journey onto Paris. We checked out of our hotel and dropped off our bags at a boutique hotel Mimi’s in SoHo where we would be spending the next 2 nights.

Buckingham Palace was one of the stops on the list that we were able to finally see. There was a long walkway to the entrance of the palace surrounded by a park. In front of the palace there was some activity with the changing of the guards that was witnessed. Seeing this entrance in real life after seeing it in the news and television so many times was amazing. Around the back end of the palace was the Royal Mews exhibit which displayed all the coaches and carriages used by the Queen. The grande finale of the Mews was an all gold carriage!

Close by to the Royal Mews was a famous bakery Peggy Porschen that specialized in cupcakes and sweet treats. We grabbed a cake slice to go from there and navigated our way through the busy Victoria Station back to SOHO to scope out the Liberty Department Store which was made out of old ships. Liberty was nice to see but no where as extravagant as Harrods. All the walking tired us out and it was time for food. Around the corner from Liberty was a pub called The Clachan that served traditional British Pie’s and had many beers on casks. The pies were extra yummy and way better than the pot pies available in the states.

Checking into our hotel, a much needed nap was on deck. This hotel room was 75 square feet! It’s exactly what I thought a London hotel room would be. Both Natalie and I are comfortable in working with small spaces so this wasn’t a big deal.

Dinner that evening was Brew Dog Seven Dials. This was a different Brew Dog location from the previous time and the inside had a different layout and beer selections. The crazy thing is everything closes at 11 pm or midnight on the weekends in the UK besides Night Clubs.

March 14

Near our hotel was a coffee shop called Insomnia coffee inside a Primark store. We were able to have tea cakes for the first time and they did not disappoint. It reminded me of a cranberry bagel meeting a muffin. The Primark store had lots of Harry Potter merch which Natalie had her best shopping journey of the trip.

Next up was a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral with multilevel viewings of the main floor, crypt, and 2 galleries that overlooked the city. I was really glad we were able to see St. Paul’s too as it was one of the most wonderful buildings I have stepped foot in. The climb to the galleries felt never ending but the views they offered were breathtaking.

View from 2nd gallery at St Pauls - 3/14/20

After a few hours of St. Paul’s the world famous Millennium Bridge was nearby and was calling for us to cross it! I’ve seen this bridge in so many films and photographs so it was surreal to walk across it.

On the opposite end of the bridge, there was a walkway on the river that passed by the Shakespeare Globe theater - we didn’t get to go inside but was able to admire it still. At the end of the path was a public marketplace called Borough Market where may vendors sold foods and goods similar to the Liberty Public Market in San Diego. We tried hot juice for the first time there and it was yummy. You could tell that this market place didn’t get the memo of COVID-19 yet as it was jammed packed and food items were easily touchable and in sneeze distance.

Brewery hopping was the next item on the list for the day. We hopped on a bus that brought us a warehouse/storage unit district of exactly where you’d expect to find the breweries at. The first stop we visited was Cloudwater which is ranked top 8 in the world for breweries. I tried a variety of their selections and get some cans to go.

My friend from college Chris and his girlfriend also met up as we were leaving Cloudwater. They came into town from Reading which is just outside of London for a concert that evening. Together we all walked to The Kernel Brewery which had a bunch of great fruited Saison’s. I also got some to-go here also to bring back to the states. The Kernel was ranked 11th best brewery in the world in 2019. After some indulging it was time to part ways for the next portion of the day.

Guess what we had in store for the evening? Harry Potter the play! We were able to snag tickets the night before to this famous show. I was never a Harry Potter fan growing up not being able to get past the first 10 pages of the first book - I did enjoy the play though and was able to follow along with Natalie giving me some backstory. After the play, we had to go back to Brew Dog SoHo again for some beer and food!

Getting back to our hotel and finding out the latest world news, the UK was being included in the travel ban to the US, but luckily we were getting out before Tuesday when the ban would start. London was still business as usual the entire day with some of the breweries taking extra precautions for service but overall you could not tell that anything was happening in the world outside of this city.

March 15

The day had finally come to return to the US after an extended London trip. We hopped on the tube for an hour journey back to the Heathrow airport. Things at the airport didn’t seem too out of the ordinary. The American Airlines agents were screening passengers that didn’t have US passports more heavily given the travel bans in place if they visited China or the rest of Europe. On our flight back home the pilots announced that we would need to fill out a CDC health questionnaire for enhanced screening once we landed in Los Angeles after customs. Some previous internet researched showed that in Dallas these additional screenings were taking an additional 6 to 7 hours to get out the airport. We braced ourselves for the worst case scenario.

Once we landed we did our custom declarations digitally at the the stations lined up, picked up our luggage and went to the appropriate immigration line. The airport staff separated the US citizens and non-US citizen lines. From the looks of it the non-US line was long and had additional health screenings. The US immigration line went pretty quickly and once we spoke to the CBP officer for 10 seconds, she basically said have a nice day barely checking our documents. The next thing you know we were exiting the airport without ever getting health screened. The time from airport de-board to on the shuttle to the parking lot was 30 minutes. We hopped in my car and drove back to San Diego which took less than 2 hours.

Our journey was complete and had very few hiccups along the way besides the re-plan mid trip. I am glad that we went on our trip and got to experience many of the sights of London before the world shut down. As I am typing this today, London finally caught up to the rest of the world and is in a similar situation as us in the US. We were always just a few days ahead of the situation when we were out there and everything seemed to have worked out accordingly to get us home in a safe and timely manner.