Here in London Town. Butter Butter Baby

 

The morning began with breakfast at Caravan, conveniently located across the river — because calories consumed after a scenic walk count less. The area had that effortlessly cool industrial vibe: old brick, steel, warehouses pretending not to be trendy while being trendy.
Breakfast? Excellent. Like, consider-ordering-everything-on-the-menu excellent.

As an early birthday surprise (or just exceptional hospitality), I was presented with cake complete with a candle. After I had eaten my way through half the menu.

Speaking of surprises: I forgot to mention yesterday that I received a lime body scrub from Lush for the occasion. Naturally, we also bought bubble bath because our hotel room had a bathtub and apparently I’ve entered the stage of life where soaking in hot water for 30 minutes feels like peak luxury. I spent half an hour floating there yesterday, enjoying my lemony bubble bath.

After breakfast, we wandered through Covent Garden, then headed towards Big Ben, with ambitious plans to continue to the Sky Garden. London Underground, however, had different plans for us — proving once again that no itinerary survives public transport.
So instead of panoramic skyline views, we simply walked. More walking. Endless walking. At some point, we found ourselves watching a cute squirrel, which in London somehow feels like an official tourist activity.

After lunch, we explored Leadenhall Market, before continuing to Barbican — an architectural masterpiece depending on who you ask, or a giant concrete Soviet fever dream depending on your mood.
Honestly? It’s ugly. But also weirdly fascinating. The kind of ugly that circles back into cool.

Dinner on the other hand came with drama.
We had plans to eat at Swiss Butter, so we walked there. Upon arrival: a queue of approximately 50–60 people outside.
Not a simple quick queue.
A banana queue. Like something out of Soviet times where rumours spread that oranges had arrived somewhere and everyone immediately abandoned their plans.
After about 45 minutes of waiting, we finally got a table.

And honestly? Worth. Every. Single. Minute. The menu was wonderfully short and uncomplicated: choose your protein and then surrender to the glorious fact that everything comes drowned in their famous Swiss buttery sauce. Simple. Dangerous. Incredible.

We finished the evening chasing sunset views because apparently exhaustion isn’t a real concept while travelling. The internet declared Primrose Hill the best place to see London at sunset, so naturally we rushed there.

We admired the view, both agreed that yes, this was lovely, and then promptly went back to the hotel to collapse into bed like two people who had accidentally walked half of England in a single day.

Here in London Town. Mind the Gap and pass on the Snacks

 

 

The alarm went off at a completely unreasonable hour because our flight was at 5:35 AM. You know it’s early when the timed terrace lights from last night are still on. The flights? Entirely uneventful. A suspiciously smooth start.

 By 8 AM London time, we had landed and by 9:30, we managed to snag the last available table at brunch downtown London already. A few eggs and some dangerously good ricotta hotcakes later, we felt vaguely human again and headed toward the hotel.

 Since check-in wasn’t ready yet (actually it was, but for 50 GBP) we did what every traveler does: changed clothes in record time and abandoned our luggage in storage, hoping we’d eventually reunite with it.

The original grand plan was to head to Camden for food, but brunch had defeated us. Full stomachs won the argument, so instead we wandered along the Thames, eventually making our way to Tower Bridge.

And finally, after countless trips to London, we walked across the famous glass floor, which is either thrilling or mildly terrifying depending on how much you trust engineering. The views, however, were worth every second of pretending not to look down too much.

On our way back to the hotel, we accidentally stumbled upon The Garden at 120 and decided to head up. Unexpected city views? Always a good idea in London.

Finally, back at the hotel, we got access to our room… only to discover it had a lovely view directly into the atrium. Romantic, if your dream holiday includes staring at indoor architecture and other rooms just a few meters away.

Thankfully, Scott came to the rescue, made a call, and suddenly we were moved to a room with an actual outdoor view.

The housekeeping team also kindly left us an unexpected bonus: a collection of forgotten dress shirts from the previous guest hanging neatly in the wardrobe. A thoughtful touch. Or a mystery. We chose not to ask questions.

For dinner, we finally made it to Camden Lock Market, specifically the delicious food street, where all self-control disappears.

We ordered a fried plantain sandwich and brisket loaded fries, and honestly? Absolute perfection.
But then came trouble.
Because Camden also has MyCookieDough.
So naturally, about ten minutes later, we found ourselves standing there holding a plate of freshly baked hot cookies drowning in Nutella and topped with ice cream. Zero regrets. Our scale at home does not know yet.

By 9 PM, we were asleep — because after a day that started before sunrise, even London couldn’t compete with the overwhelming desire to collapse into bed.

Here in London Town. Plan B.

Plan A was to take tube to Paddington and from there Heathrow Express to the airport. London underground  Didn't play along and let us know that neither of the direct lines to Paddington are working on this beautiful Saturday. Helpful staff in the station suggested us to take two lines to a nearby station and from there walk to Paddington. However, we needed to be in airport on time, not start an underground-seeing tour, so we just grabbed an Uber to Paddington.

I went through security with no issues. They patted me down, did an explosive test, my luggage came through with no additional check, but that's where the smooth security ended. Because Polina was coming through the next security line, her luggage went into secondary check and just when her bag was the next to screen, the security guards had the change of shift. For that the new guard arrived, took the morning one with her and both disappeared for 10 minutes. They returned, made a royal change like the guards bu Westminster Abbey and after mere 15 minutes of waiting, the new girl turned her attention to Polina's bag. Although the reason for additional check was a jar of peanut butter, she started with opening all the pockets and zips, took out all kinds of cosmetics, medicine, edible and through the toothbrush on the floor. After a short discussion, they kept the peanut butter (turned out that unlike in Stansted, where it's no issue, you can't take it with you when you fly through Heathrow), Polina was able to repack her bag and walk to the feedback station, where you can hit four different buttons to rate your experience in the security. Polina rated them 15 times.

We had breakfast in Leon again, flew to Frankfurt, where we had to go through another security (unlike in London, the Germans double-checked my bag because of the cheddar I brought with me), ran faster than Usain Bolt to the gate, where the boarding had supposed to be started a while ago just to find out that the flight will be delayed.

Leaving the hotel at 7am on London and arriving after 6pm in Tallinn Ariport.

Here in London Town. The Tourist is learning

Tourist knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and doesn't count on random eatery on the way anymore. Today we didn't have any swag to carry and the weather was nice, so leaving the hotel, we turned to the opposite direction to make a quick porridge and coffee stop in Leon. We had oatmeal with banana and dates and walked to the conference.

For lunch today the sandwich choice was way better than yesterday - less bread and more filling. And instead of those weird sausage rolls they had chicken satay and little leek quiches. Still no dessert, which was a huge disappointment.

Since I had scheduled a quick coffee with an agency for 3pm, we discussed few things over the coffee and I went back to the office from there. We had dinner in the Lebanese place nearby, watched, how the square in the business district was packed with suits drinking beer, stocked up some necessities in M&S (like their cookies are something you can't not buy) and returned to the hotel to pack the bags.

Here in London Town. Oats with warm milk

Today the Devoxx started and we were supposed to arrive at 8:30am. The weather was nice, so we decided to take the 30-minute walk there and have breakfast on the way. Right before the business center we noticed Wetherspoon, waited few minutes until 8am and when the doors opened, stepped in. Exactly at 8:01 we placed out oatmeal and coffee order and took a seat. Or two seats, that is. Right after us a crowd followed and started to point the beer tabs for their order. At 8:18am we were still sitting there with our coffees (because that we had to take ourselves, not wait to be served) and already 21 minutes after ordering four bowls arrived to our table. Two smaller ones had 8 blueberries each and two bigger ones had raw oat flakes soaked in warm milk. We ate the blueberries, didn't chew our way through the raw oats, refilled the coffee and walked to the conference.

For lunch they had five'o'clock tea, except it was 1 o'clock and there was no tea. But they had five'o'clock tea cucumber sandwiches. And some eight more types of sandwiches. And veggie pakoras and some weird sausages in dough. Sort of like hot dog made with Italian sausage and then cut into slices.

Since the conference was over early enough, in some unexplainable state of mind I thought it would be a great idea to go to Notting Hill. Being a smart traveller I had of course consulted Google Maps and it had confirmed that one tube and appr. 30 minutes should take me there. Already in the underground I understood that Google Maps is not always right and knows everything. I did have to change. And already a mere hour after starting the trip I found myself in Notting Hill. I decided that it's already late, so I won't waste time on salmon pasta and rushed to measure the streets. And kept an eye on the time, to make it back to M&S before 8pm.

Here in London Town. Alarm.

 

The light migraine from last night had turned into a heavy one by this morning. I took a pill, stopped by in Leon, got a porridge with fresh blueberries (or so I thought) and a cup of coffee and walked to the office with enthusiastic assumption that the pill works its magic and soon I'll be migraineless again and feeling much better. A barely survived the first meeting, cancelled everything else for the first half of the day and returned to the hotel to sleep. Few hours into that I started to feel better, when suddenly all the fire alarms went off. At first I hoped, it's some testing or technical error, but it didn't seem to stop. With the more pounding head ache I got dressed and walked out of my room. The first cleaning lady I saw and asked, what is going on, could only shake her head and tell me "Sorry, no English!". I tried again using more simple words, but she only managed to add two more phrases: "Reception. No lift!" So I walked down from the 7th floor, made it to the reception and saw a notification which stated that every Wednesday between 9am and 12pm they have fire alarm testing for our safety. In my humble opinion they failed miserably because I didn't see any customers evacuating. Or what use are those tests, if nobody gets out of the building in case of fire? Anyway, by that moment I was so pissed with my migraine there that I fairly impolitely asked why they don't have this information in the room? Or in the lifts? Or in the booking email? Or why wasn't it mentioned two days earlier while we checked in? "Sorry, but we have this information here on the counter" Like ... seriously? Do all the other Travelodge customers just in case stop by reception every day in today's information and digital era to see, if they might have some printed out information on the counter? By the way, they also don't have any phones in rooms, so you also can't call them to ask what's going on. Even writing this my blood pressure goes up again.

Within next hour I got my migraine under control and returned to the office. Today I was smarter and visited M&S before 8pm, got a bunch of fresh raspberries, tomato and mozzarella salad, parmesan chips, fresh orange juice and few more things and made my way back to the hotel.

And here's a lovely picture of Leon's porridge. Left one is the picture form their menu and right one the porridge I got.

Here in London Town. Towers.

Since the coffee machine in the office is broken, I had planned to stop by the Starbucks, right below our office and like a proper metropolitan, casually walk in the office, phone in one hand and take-away coffee in the other hand. The plan was flushed down the sewage by Starbucks, that like the coffee machine in the office had just closed down. Had to walk across the street and get the coffee from Pret A Manger.

Our London office is now puppy friendly and there were 3-4-months old Yoko and Nia getting to know each other today. Especially well did they get to know the carpet, btw.

As the TK Maxx on Oxford street didn't play along yesterday, I decided to visit another one today. The one, that's conveniently on the way, when you go to the Tower Bridge. I bought two tops, one silky light blue and one with flamingos. From there I made my way first to London Towers and then to Tower Bridge. Tower wifi was so good on both sides of the river that the nonexistent, but expensive hotel wifi didn't grew just pale, but totally invisible in compare to the free tower wifi.

On the way home it became obvious that my plan to grab some raspberries and something more for dinner from Marks & Spencer isn't going to work out, because the Business Area's M&S is closed by 8pm. What time do all those business men their overhours when they are not in the office at 8pm anymore? By the way, there are mainly two types of people in this area - the ones, who pack their suit and dress shirt into backpack every morning, dress into joggers and run to the office and the ones, who rush to the office, smartphone in hand and scrolling the screen. The tourist better watches out that isn't on anyone's way.

Here in London Town. Bank Holiday

We had done great job booking our London trip, so that when we arrived in the office at 11am on Monday, it was just four of us there, because unexpectedly we had found out few days earlier that it's Early May Bank Holiday on May 6th in UK. An Estonian would call it a day off and Germans refer it to is as Feiertag (festive day). We replied seome emails that hadn't arrived, because every Brit was out celebrating Early May Bank Holiday and went to do some sightseeing after that. We had planned to go to St. Pauls Cathedral tower, but once we found out that by no means is Paul a cheap dude and is cashing in 20 pounds for each climber, who wants to see those breathtaking views, we quickly re-planned and went up to the roof terrace of the neighbouring shopping center. From there we had a great view over the same Saint Paul. We were satisfied. From there we walked over the Millennium bridge to Tate Modern, which also had a roof terrace and also completely free. We looked into the rooms of neighbouring buildings, didn't see any inhabitants and went down to have some quick lunch.

Sightseeing was followed by quick shopping (extremely quick, because it turned out that the TK Maxx on Oxford Street will be opened on June 13th and I didn't plan to wait that long) and then hitting the bed in the hotel. Because the previous night was merely 3 hours long. Or short.