London with Travelodge and Tesco – again!

[tonymc]

October 2012 half-term sees us visiting London again, using a combination of cheap Travelodge rooms and Tesco Clubcard Rewards. It all started back in April when Joanne gave me tickets for my birthday to see Shrek - The Musical at London over half-term.

Cue the watch for the £19 Travelodge rooms – last year we ended up in Ealing Broadway Travelodge which had just opened, this year at the (yet to be opened) Teddington location which is handily placed for the rail service into Waterloo with free parking, and more importantly was available for the magical £19. Two nights were booked (21/22 October), but a few months later we decided to add the Saturday night which cost another £45! However, three nights for £83 plus £20 for Travelcards for all three of on each of the two days we were planning to travel into the centre of London still looked to be a bargain. With the accommodation booked and Tesco Rewards vouchers obtained for sightseeing and restaurants, fast forward to October…

Day 1: Saturday 20th October 2012

A not too early start from Wigan with an unplanned rerouting from our planned route via the M42 and M40 due to traffic congestion at the NEC saw us first of all arriving at Kingston-upon-Thames a little after 1pm. After finding some parking space away from the town centre, the ladies set forth on some serious shopping whilst yours truly had a wander around the town and down by the river – anything to avoid Primark on a Saturday! Whatever Kingston does to attract shoppers, I’m sure many a town centre manager would love to have bottled and use themselves – the town centre was absolutely jammed.

Anyhow, just as I was on the point of calling into one of the pubs for a swift half, the two shoppers phoned me to let me know they had escaped from Primark and were waiting for me. A few more shops for early Christmas presents and we were done. Back to the car, back across Kingston Bridge, and the short 10 minute drive up to Teddington. Driving into Teddington, we noticed a large number of restaurants along the road, which bode well for our stay.

Found the Travelodge without too many problems – conveniently located in the centre of the town and two minutes walk from the railway station. It looks as if it has been converted from an old office block, but having only been open for five or six months, everything was still fairly new and shiny. The staff were excellent – when we found that our room was right by the corridor door (we seem to be plagued by these doors slamming shut throughout the night), we were moved to a room on the top floor well away from the doors.

Having checked in, we had a couple of hours to kill before our pre-booked reservation (ADR? ) at Pizza Express, conveniently located about 100m across the road from the hotel, so I went out for a stroll into the town centre and down to the station to buy our Travelcards for Sunday’s visit to London, whilst the ladies tried on their new purchases.

Come 7:30, we made our way across to Pizza Express. A decent enough meal, although my starter was cold when it arrived and this was replaced without any question, generally good service, and very noticeable that the clientele were mainly families. When the bill came, we had £40 of Tesco Vouchers to use, and the staff very kindly not only knocked off the cost of my starter, but made sure we didn’t lose out using the Tesco Vouchers (redeemable against food only) by converting our coffees into desserts on the bill, leaving us with only the drinks to pay for.

By 9:30 we were all tired, so made the short journey back over to our base, where I managed to catch a couple of the games on Match of the Day before calling it a night.

Day 2: Sunday 21st October 2012

Don’t believe the weather forecast - we were promised an overcast but cloudy day, which actually turned out to be a cold, overcast and drizzly day!

Our first day into London saw us at Teddington station for the 9:55 train to Waterloo, which took around 35 minutes. On arrival at Waterloo, the plan was to get the tube over to Piccadilly Circus to cash in our Tesco Days Out vouchers for the Original London Sightseeing Tour. However, I recalled that the service also called at Waterloo, so we managed to find the correct stop with a member of staff selling tickets, so we exchanged £62.50 of our Tesco Vouchers (plus £2.50 cash! ) for our tickets that gave us 48 hours travel plus a free river cruise.

Our first leg took us over Waterloo Bridge to Aldwych, past St Pauls, south over London Bridge then back over Tower Bridge, past the Tower of London then over Southwark Bridge to the stop for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre where we alighted.

Alex had wanted to visit this attraction, so we traded our remaining Tesco Vouchers for admission, where we enjoyed the guided tour and also caught a special harvest performance. Following the tour, we then had a wander around the exhibition before Alex decided she needed food.

We managed to find a restaurant that suited our fussy eater back near St Pauls, then made our way back across the river at Blackfriars Bridge to rejoin the tour bus. We were fortunate that a bus appeared within minutes of us arriving at the stop, so this took us back along Victoria Embankment, Parliament Square and along Whitehall before terminating at Piccadilly Circus. We then nipped around the corner to pick up another bus on the same tour, which took us past the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, past Hyde Park Corner then down to Victoria, past Buckingham Palace, and down to Parliament Square before crossing Westminster Bridge and back to Waterloo. We decided to stay on to Aldwych where we alighted for a look around Covent Garden, then a walk up to Leicester Square where we caught the tube back to Waterloo.

Luck was with us as we managed to catch a train for Teddington leaving within 5 minutes, and we were soon back at the hotel, with time to get scrubbed up before dinner. We had seen a couple of reviews for the Tide End pub by the side of the Thames, so decided to eat there tonight. We decided to drive to the pub as it was still raining, but be warned that the exit from the first floor parking at the Travelodge is extremely tight – our mid-size hatchback only just squeezed through, so I’m not sure how the owner of the Range Rover parked there would fare!

When we arrived, things didn’t look good – the pub looked empty. However, when we went in, there were a few people at the rear of the pub, and we received a cheery welcome from the landlady (I presume anyhow) behind the bar. Drinks and food were ordered, and the food itself was decent enough, and certainly cheaper than our lunchtime dining cost! That said, there are a good number of other restaurants in the Teddington area all within 15 minutes walk of the Travelodge, so we wouldn’t have been struggling for eating at all.

So after a relaxed meal, we retraced our steps back to the Travelodge where we would be able to enjoy a lie-in on Monday morning before returning to London.

Day 3: Monday 22nd October 2012

As we were seeing Shrek tonight plus the off-peak Travel Card doesn’t become valid until 9:30, a later start was the order of the day. We woke to a glorious view of Teddington - in the fog and mist, conditions which were to prevail throughout the day.

We caught a train around the other side of the Kingston loop at 10:25, travelling via Richmond and Barnes. On arrival at Waterloo, a stop at McDs for Alex to grab a quick bite to eat as we were planning to have dinner early tonight, then we walked over to Westminster Pier to catch the 12:15 boat down to Greenwich.

Having done this boat trip last year and only having limited time at Greenwich, this time we were planning to spend more time there to explore the museum and observatory. The trip took just over an hour, and we noted that the building work being undertaken last year had turned into a number of restaurants (F&Bs, Zizzi are the ones I can remember! ). We started walking through the Naval School, where we discovered that it was graduation day for those studying at the Greenwich University (congratulations to anyone who is reading and was graduating on Monday! ). We then found the Maritime museum across the road, and spent 40 minutes in here before heading off to the Observatory.

However, at this point, Alex asked if we could revisit Buckingham Palace, so a change of plan saw us briefly checking out the Cutty Sark before boarding the boat at 2:25 back to Tower Bridge, where we transferred to the tube for a faster journey to St James’ Park (London, not home of Newcastle United! ), a short walk from the palace. We managed to get sufficient photos to keep Alex happy, then the plan was to catch the Tour Bus from just around the corner back to Aldwych for our 5:15 “ADR” at yet another Pizza Expresss over at Covent Garden.

I was expecting that traffic would be quite busy at this time of day, but our driver took only 20 minutes to arrive at Aldwych, this in spite of a couple of river crossings, and as a result, we found ourselves with over an hour to kill.

OK – there’s only so much window shopping even the ladies can do over a weekend, so at 4:30 we were all hungry so hunted down our restaurant (no mean feat as there are 8 or 9 branches around the Covent Garden area! ) to find it almost deserted, so no problem with our early arrival. In passing, we also noticed a lot of restaurants with pre-theatre deals for around the £10-£12 mark for two courses, so no shortage of places to have a reasonably priced meal.

We all enjoyed a starter and main, with Alex and myself sharing a dessert, plus a couple of coffees to try and spin out our visit and reduce the time we would have to wait for Shrek. By 6:10, the restaurant was almost full, so we thought it prudent to leave having managed to kill around 1 hour 40 minutes! Tesco vouchers were accepted without any problem, leaving us with a balance of £18 to pay. Once out, another stroll around the shops at Covent Garden brought the time to 7pm, which we deemed acceptable to enter the theatre for a 7:30 start.

Joanne had managed to get really good seats in row C on the end of the row, and we had no-one sitting in front of us so had a great view. There were also a few seats spare to the side of us, although I suspect as most schools were not off until the following week, there would be few spare seats then.

The show itself was really good, although we did feel that having seen the film several times, you were waiting for some dialect that didn’t actually materialise. However, this didn’t detract from the excellent acting by everyone involved, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the show.

With the show finishing around 9:45, we managed to make a quick exit from the theatre, and a brisk “speed walk” over Waterloo Bridge saw us just in time to catch the 10:12 train back to Teddington, and we were back in our room with a brew by 11.

Day 4: Tuesday 23rd October 2012

Home day today – and it was still a misty view from our window. With a checkout time of midday, this let us have another lie-in and take our time packing. Having accomplished this, we then took the opportunity to have a final stroll around Teddington and to pick up some goodies for the drive back. Returning via Hampton Hill and the A316, M3, M25 and M40, we were driving in fog until we were north of Birmingham, although still no sun! An uneventful journey up the M6 saw us back home late afternoon, feeling somewhat glad that our Tesco Vouchers had saved us some £180 over the weekend.

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