Fun and party time is over, time to go back home to Toronto; considering that I am writing this after the fact, looks like we made it home in one piece. There were several unknowns and firsts that I was not sure about for this departure but let’s see how things went in your standard travel day.

Our flight was at 12:05pm at Heathrow airport terminal 2, after the disastrous and extremely expensive black cab ride on day zero of coming from the airport to london, we decided to get to the airport the recommended way, that almost everyone tells is the better way; use the London tube to get there.

Humans, first thing in the morning on the Piccadilly line, a line that goes through central london that ends at Heathrow airport, but also diverges into another path ending in uxbridge, another place. The time is now roughly 7amish, we woke up at like 6am and checked out of our hotel and walked our way to Holbourn station, the nearest station closest to us that connects to this line.

After a certain amount of time, most of the subway car became very sparse as it began to exit the city center and make it’s way towards Heathrow in the more rural areas.  Noice, most of the people still onboard had luggage and or looked like they worked at the airport in uniforms, we are good I think.

In roughly less than an hour we got to Healthrow airport via the london underground, wow. Pretty good shit, and super cheap too. Man, I wish we did this when we arrived, we could have saved ourselves so much money and time. Trial and error I guess.

From the underground terminal they always have lots of signs and arrows pointing you the direction you need to go which are very useful when lines are so confusing to get to and navigate to.

We did it, we got to the airport in good time and without incident, good shit.

These elevators are the ones you use to either go to the underground London tube terminal and or taxi cab pickup, don’t do taxi cab, it’s just not worth it at all. If I ever come back to London for whatever reason, now I know, use the tube, use picadilly line and or any of the other lines that go to central London, anything else is probably better.

Unlike other airports, we were able to check in immediately and drop off our bags. I like their luggage system better in that you check your own using a handheld scanner thing and you actually see your name and where your luggage it going on the screen.

We have lots of time to kill as we arrived pretty early, might as well explore and search for things to buy for gifts.

Heathrow has all their fancy British brands and shit, even Rolex has a booth here but do people actually buy super expensive watches like this at an airport? Maybe only for super rich I guess.

The upscale fancy department store Harrods also has an outpost here to sell some last minute travel gifts, sure.

After exploring for some breakfast, we ended up getting this pretty bumpin place that seemed to be pretty popular, Leons.

Their array of options is quite interesting. They even have shakshuka and egg pot things, which is cool.

Despite it’s fancy and unique menu, my sister and I decided to keep it simple and base for now. It should be noted that the small bottle of orange juice I brought cost almost like $4 pounds, man, shit so expensive. They need breakfast meal deal or something there.

Sausage and egg with spicy house ketchup. Not bad, but do you know what can be done to make this better? Make this into a McDouble!

My sister’s avocado and haloumi cheese sandwich, make no mistakes, these are not mcmuffins, the bread is different, almost like regular burger buns.

While there is a clear distinct lack of guns and arms magazines on the shelf, seems like everything is in order. Looks like the sun here is about the same as it is back home I guess.

Gotta get that last meal deal man for the road. First meal deal at Wh Smith, last meal deal at Wh Smith. Full circle.

Self checkout meal deal doing it’s magic. Pay $6.99, save $5.49 because of the discount, gud shit. Some meal deals even at Tesco are like $3.99, the cheapest I’ve ever seen.

Farewell space boy and black women actor greeting me and waving me farewell before we enter our gate of no return.

One last NPC wave for the road, here’s to you London.

Final NPC wave for my sister, both of us carrying a lot of airport souvenirs and gift/goods, too much in fact in my opinion.

Despite being super early, we didn’t have much time to linger about since we did so much shopping and browsing. They only, or at least they say they only tell you where your gate is supposed to be at like 10:50am, we checked at like 11am and found it but it’s like a 15 min travel walk/motivator to the gate. By the time we got there, they were already boarding our plane at like 11:20am, our flight is at 12:05pm, damn they don’t mess around with the times in the UK.

On board without much trouble, we got the center aisle seats this time which I think are better than window seats in my opinion. This guy in front of me looks like he losing his mind tho, hope this is not another Stewart.

One last proof of plane existence before takeoff, should be ok.

Once the plane got of the ground and stabilized, we decided to eat our final meal deal combo. We originally were going to chill at the gate and eat it but because of time, yea, that wasn’t going to happen. I got this one called chicken triple, which has 3 sandwiches instead of 2, consisting of chicken corn, chicken bacon and bacon mayo. All three have mayo so that last one is just base plain chicken. Good value, got those nuggs again, good shit and smoothie.

My sister got chicken and bacon main, I think they give you more chicken and stuff because there is just two sandwiches, or rather, when you get the triple like I did, it’s less filling in exchange for more bread so it kinda evens out maybe. She got some base cheese.

Some time after our meal deal feast, they served us our ‘dinner’, a choice between chicken and pasta. I got the chicken, which is some chicken breast with some cream sauce with orzo pasta and some other salsa like sauce. In many ways, this also can be considered pasta as well too.

The pasta that my sister got, which is basically just pasta tubes in red sauce with cheese. Pretty base but it’s clear this time the chicken was better both in value and in taste. They gave some horrible salad of peeled cucumbers in some dressing, didn’t even try, is nasty. Also blocks of cheese I think and bread/dessert.

Before 1 hour before landing in Toronto, they gave out these pastries, which is basically bootleg GREEGS. They had a veg one too, chose the chicken, again.

For plane food, it is decent not bad, not like a fresh sausage roll however or GREEGS but it will do. Nice container and packaging tho.

We land safely, noice, the plane seems like a mix of both Brits and Canadians. I wonder where that women/girl is doing with that big peacock feather sticking out of her bag? Gift maybe, who knows?

For some reason, they had a very slow exit off the plane. They were checking each and every single passengers passport again which is different from other times. I think they were looking for someone on the plane, or rather, there was someone on the plane who is going to be booked/not supposed to be here as they had police waiting around the gate as well. Oh shit, maybe a terrorist or criminal gonna be booked, better hurry out of this place soon.

Waiting for luggage to come as my butt hurt. Long plane rides like these always hurt but my ass it seems. I was waiting for a long time for my luggage, my sister’s came and was gotten so it was strange it was taking so long. Turns out my luggage was one of the first to come out and the airport people took it off on the side already to make room for more to come on the belt, doh. I was waiting for nothing, I hate when that happens. Shortly afterwards, we called our dad for a ride back home. Mission accomplished, we arrived saved back home.

With that said, let’s take a look at most of the merch and trinket/souvenirs I got from this London trip:

A collection of key chains that I got from various places I visited in London. From stonehenge, Warwick castle, to generic shit like king Charles key chain and London underground and more focused things like Rosetta stone and belfast. I love key chain trinkets.

A collection of coins and or coin like medallions from the various locations I went to. All of the big ones were brought straight up from gift shops, like the smaller ones from machines you can just choose which coins you want. And a lone half penny from golden hinde because they have nothing else. I love useless collectable coins.

All the magnets that I got from the trip, ranging from various art pieces from the many museums I went to to magnets of artist pallets and my favorite bait magnet of them all from a random gift shop on the street in Trafalgar square, the king Charles magnet with young and old mother queen looking on behind him, lol so jokes.

This next grouping of items is more random, from a mini figure of big ben, Rosetta stone paper weight, a bag of runes from the British museum, mints with a great wave and of course mini Stonehenge rock mini figure. I also brought a red leather bookmark from Shakespeare’s birthplace gift shop because of my sister’s nice story/mission. lol jokes.

A collection of shirts and three hats. Seems like I have also become a hat collector, get hat, just have for collection, no intention of ever weaning lol. The shirts however I will probably wear, gud shit.

More misc goods, some water cans/tins from the British Museum, these are just empty water tins, we drank the water, but they look so nice, I think they are kind of meant to be gifts. WH smith tin with some fudge I think inside of it, looks so nice, plus meal deal memories legacy. The right most tin is just nice looking with some shortbread caramel cookies. Oh and a ornament cushion thing that says king Charles because he’s the king after all.

The last thing I expected to buy on this trip was an anime related book, but here I am, buying a book from the British museum, about manga. Yes, I brought that book because it’s unique. I asked the shopkeeper if they had any sealed copies and he said no, whatever is out on display now is all the stock they have left as the book is out of print now, came out in 2022 and that was a reprint, the original print was in 2019. Due to the circumstances, even tho it’s a a bit beat up and worn, I brought this book, it was kinda expensive at like 35 Pounds but I don’t want to regret NOT buying this book, I may never see it again or have access to it as it’s a publication from the British Museum itself. Gud shit.

With that said, that was all the stuff I brought from our time in London, good shit. In terms of my overall thoughts on London and the city itself, I think they have lived up to my expectations, London is truly a great global city, worthy of being up there in the ranks of New York and Tokyo etc. While London is an old city, it is constantly being rebuilt and reshaped, the blend of old and new reminds me a bit of Tokyo in some regards and that’s a good thing. The London underground works very well, and something that other countries should aspire to build tho not to the level of Japan’s subway and rail systems which is understandably due to the age of London’s system as well. There is no shortage of things to see and do in the city and or surrounding areas outside of the city center like Stonehenge, other towns/cities etc. The city is extremely walk-able and as mentioned the public transit/subway is top notch, although not without it’s problems as most lines do not have AC. The food is diverse as it’s people that inhabit London, which says a lot as the city is populated by so many different kinds of people; I feel that it’s just as or maybe even more diverse than New York. London is an expensive city as you would expect, but that comes simply because of the conversion rate with most other currencies between other countries being so bad with the British Pound; for Canada, it’s basically double our CAD and that hurts for tourists and visitors. However, if you are a brit living in London, you’ll be fine as a pound is just a pound anyways; and besides you got that meal deal to fall back on if you are low on cash. But a question remains, would I visit London again? Sure, but not anytime soon and not out of pure tourism. If I were to go back to London, it would be because of work and or a time limited event like a convention or concert/gathering being held in the city and nowhere else; but as most of those outside of work are held in other cities, I would be unlikely to return to London otherwise. Make no mistake, London is great, but traveling 7 hours both ways and with an unfavorable currency conversion, I would be hard pressed to go to London, just for fun, there needs to be a reason, unlike this time which was for pure bait tourism. As for my trip experiences myself, I am largely satisfied. I ate a lot of good stuff and saw most if not all of the things I wanted to see so there is not much improvement other than a few other sites/museums that we just didn’t have enough time for, such as the Imperial War Museum, Buckingham palace/changing of the guards, curry/brick lane and a few others. The day trip tours were a new experience for me and were interesting but I am unlikely to do them again unless the location I want to see/get to is very far and hard to get to, which in both cases for us, they were. I just like taking my time and doing things at my own pace, not the breakneck speed most tours often require, I feel that they are doing the locations a disservice and become in a truest sense of the word a ‘tourist’ experience. But yea, London overall is good, but again? Probably not anytime soon. It was a good first trip to Europe, even tho the UK is not in the EU anymore, but I will still count it as such; mission accomplished.