The inflight meal for our one-hour flight was strangely generous – a warm chicken and rice pasta meal, choice of different breads, scones, cream, jam, chocolate mousse tart, and two mini-bottles of champagne – and as expected there wasn’t enough time to finish it all. Not much later after meal service started and before I could even finish slathering my delicious scone with clotted cream and jam, the pilot gave us the descent notice to fold our tray tables to get ready to land in London City Airport. I was about to down my champagne like there was no tomorrow until the steward assured me about taking my time.

The swing through immigration was trouble-free and after I got my request to splurge on a taxi ride to our hotel in cobblestoned Spitalfields, we were front and center of our home base for the next few days. It was nice if not suitably decent  for the occasion.

We haven’t made the rounds yet but the hotel’s location is promising, and access to the Underground is easy enough via Liverpool Station 10 minutes away. It’s not  a full-service hotel – we actually need to press a doorbell to be let in, and there’s no restaurant at all on site – but the atmosphere inside plus its location in Spitalfields was as typically Dickensian as it could get. No bah humbugs with this one so far. Well maybe just one – the separate hot and cold water faucets in the bathroom sink is still very much a head scratcher.