Trip to the UK

2025-10-23

Joanne, baby, and I went to the UK! We went to London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Bath.

1 Monday, 2025-09-01: Arrival

We arrived in the afternoon. Originally, the plan was to take the Piccadilly line directly to the hotel, but there was an outage due to signalling failures to Heathrow, so we ended up taking the Elizabeth line to Farringdon Station and then transferred to the Thameslink.

The Standard London, the hotel at which we were staying for the first three nights.

Then we checked into the Standard London and had steak for dinner at Flat Iron King’s Cross.

Meats expectations. It's a wagyu bavette steak cooked medium rare with sides of creamed spinach, bone marrow mashed potatoes, and green salad to make me feel healthier. — Meats expectations. It’s a wagyu bavette steak cooked medium rare with sides of creamed spinach, bone marrow mashed potatoes, and green salad to make me feel healthier.

2 Tuesday, 2025-09-02: King's Cross and Camden

Our hotel was right across from St Pancras Station, which offers a great view of this amazing piece of architecture. Apparently, when it was first built, it was criticized for being too ostentatious for a station. It’s way more fancy than King’s Cross station, next to it, which was built merely a decade earlier with a much more austere look.

For breakfast, we ate at Halfcup King’s Cross.

Salmon benedict but it's on some kind of cylindrical croissant rather than a typical English muffin. — Salmon benedict but it’s on some kind of cylindrical croissant rather than a typical English muffin.

Then, I went for a brief walk to take photos of train stations.

There was a guy who had climbed up the clock tower of King's Cross Station to protest the Iranian government. — There was a guy who had climbed up the clock tower of King’s Cross Station to protest the Iranian government.

We wanted to start off the trip in a relaxing fashion so we walked to nearby Coal Yard for food and shopping.

Coal Yard has a cool mix of modern and old architecture.

For lunch, we ate at Dishoom, which was described as the “most overrated and underrated restaurant in London” by Vittles magazine.

Interior of Dishoom King's Cross. — Interior of Dishoom King’s Cross.

In my opinion, the butterflied prawns were delicious, but the okra fries were greasy and soggy, and curry was average (not bad, but doesn’t really stand out from all the other curries elsewhere).

In the afternoon, we walked to Camden market. Camden is a highly diverse neighborhood. We saw many shops selling useless trinkets like fake Labubus and we didn’t end up buying anything.

For dinner, we wanted something light so we got a rice noodle at Holy Sheep.

A street intersection near Camden underground station.

Then we took the Underground back. It was so noisy that my Apple Watch gave me a notification warning me of high noise exposure. Hopefully my baby’s hearing isn’t permanently ruined.

London Underground 1995 Stock train serving the Northern Line.

After we got back to the hotel, I snuck out for some nighttime photography.

Entrance to St. Pancras Station. It was surreal seeing the station roof through the archway, like a portal to a different world.

A rare Intercity 225 at King's Cross Station. — A rare Intercity 225 at King’s Cross Station.

3 Wednesday, 2025-09-03: Day trip to Cambridge

From London, you can go to either Cambridge or Oxford by train in roughly one hour. Since our hotel was near King’s Cross Station, where the train goes to Cambridge, as opposed to Paddington Station, where the train goes to Oxford, we picked Cambridge.

First, we had a full English breakfast and a salmon benedict from Nono’s, which was near our hotel. It was affordable but the quality was mediocre. The Hollandaise on the salmon benedict was much worse than yesterday’s, and the full English breakfast had only one egg and no black pudding. But overall, it was still serviceable.

Then, we went to catch the train at King’s Cross station.

Main concourse. If you look closely, you can see Platform 9 \frac{3}{4}. — Main concourse. If you look closely, you can see Platform $9 \frac{3}{4}$ .

Upon arriving at Cambridge, we went to Fancett’s for lunch. We ordered the three course lunch (but with different courses for the two of us), including:

Imam bayıldı, minted yoghurt, fresh pomegranate & lavosh crispbreads
A greek salad of feta, Isle of Wight tomato, charentais melon & crispy capers
Thinly sliced roast pork loin, fine French beans, confit shallot & anchovy
Trout & smoked haddock fishcake, with a chives & roe butter sauce

It was very tasty.

With our stomachs full, it was time for sightseeing! We took a bus to the city centre. The bus driver asked us “What can I get for you?” which was surprising. Apparently, they have to manually input the destination, and the fare is calculated that way rather than being a flat fee.

We didn’t go into King’s College because the entrance cost was high and it looked like it was under construction.

Here are two photos of Great St Mary’s church, a 15th century church in the late perpendicular Gothic style.

Exterior of Great St Mary's. — Exterior of Great St Mary’s.

Interior of Great St Mary's. — Interior of Great St Mary’s.

Then we walked into the university!

Gate of Honour, Gonville and Caius College.

View of Trinity Bridge and punts from Garret Hostel Bridge.

We went to check out Corpus Christi College. It was raining quite heavily so we ducked into the chapel. After waiting a while, the rain subsided temporarily, so I could get the following photos.

The New Court of Corpus Christi College.

Afterwards, we ran out of time so we took the train back to London. It was a long walk back to the train station while raining and pushing a baby stroller. Back in London, we had dinner at Dim Sum Duck. We had to queue for a long time but it was delicious and actually better quality than Bay Area Cantonese restaurants.

On the walk back to the hotel, it was blue hour, so I snapped two more pictures of train stations. Thanks to my superior camera with a f/1.7 lens that’s super sharp wide open, I could handhold these nearly nighttime shots with amazing image quality.

St. Pancras Station on the way back to the hotel.

King's Cross Station. — King’s Cross Station.

4 Thursday, 2025-09-04: Going to Edinburgh

We woke up and took the train to Edinburgh! We booked first class on the LNER Azuma. With first class, you can get a free meal, plus the seats are slightly wider, which is nice for the long journey.

Ploughman's grazing box. — Ploughman’s grazing box.

It was a four and a half hour ride on the LNER Azuma from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley. On the way, we saw a lot of sheep. However, I didn’t get many good photos since I was holding the baby.

Upon arriving, we had a late lunch at White Horse Oyster & Seafood Bar. We ate a bunch of Caledonian oysters, a crab meat Scotch egg, a scallop topped with caviar, a bunch of steamed mussels, and a salmon crudo. It was quite delicious.

Then we checked into the Hoxton Edinburgh. It’s a recently opened hotel that took over the site of what used to be the Grosvenor Hotel. The building is a Georgian building with beautiful renovation inside.

4.1 Afternoon stroll from Haymarket

We wanted to take the first day in Edinburgh easy since we had two nights there, so we just took a short stroll from the hotel. St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral was very close to our hotel.

St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. — St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Interior of the St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. — Interior of the St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Then, we went to Dean Bridge to get a photo of Dean Village.

Afterwards, we walked towards Princes Street, taking photos of various houses and buildings along the way.

The Caledonian Hotel, which looks quite nice but was too expensive.

From Princes Street we had a good view of Edinburgh Castle. To be honest, Princes Street itself was very uninspiring as it was all full of modern shops.

Then we were too tired so we took the tram back to the hotel. We had dinner at the Italian restaurant in the hotel, called Patatino. They have really pretty plates but it was very dark.

Salmon crudo, presumably made with real Scottish salmon.

5 Friday, 2025-09-05: Edinburgh sightseeing

I woke up with a fever and diarrhea. This was very bad because I was extremely looking forward to eating a delicious Scottish breakfast consisting of Lorne sausage, Tattie scone, black pudding, and Haggis. In fact, we spent £44 on just that, but I was too sick to eat any of it.

Joanne went and bought me medicine. After eating paracetamol and loperamide, I instantly recovered, so in the afternoon we went sightseeing!

We took the tram to Princes Street and then walked to the Royal Mile. I was very excited to see St Giles’ Cathedral, but unfortunately, the west side of it with the plaza was completely sealed off due to filming. I could only get this crappy photo of the east side, which was very backlit in the afternoon as the sun was in the west.

View of the Royal Mile; Tron Kirk is the tall spire in this photo.

Then, I went to check out the Palace of Holyroodhouse while Joanne and baby rested in the palace cafe.

No photos were allowed in the interior of the palace, unfortunately. Generally, I was surprised at how shabby it was, and by the straightforward layout. Unlike other palaces where you have to go through many layers of antechambers and halls to get to stuff like the throne room and the king’s bedroom, this palace was quite compact and you are almost immediately in the throne room upon ascending the stairs. Some rooms, like Mary Queen of Scots’ room, had really narrow staircases going up. The wooden flooring creaked a lot and the tapestries were all faded.

The history was fascinating, though, and the audio tour was great!

6 Saturday, 2025-09-06: York

On our way back from Edinburgh to London, we stopped in York for several hours. At Edinburgh Waverley station, we saw some British Rail Class 43 (HST) trains, but we took an LNER Azuma instead.

British Rail Class 43, one of the most badass diesel trains ever, and the speed record holder for diesel trains. It's currently serving ScotRail. — British Rail Class 43, one of the most badass diesel trains ever, and the speed record holder for diesel trains. It’s currently serving ScotRail.

Our train to York was delayed by half an hour due to track maintenance. After getting a basic noodle at a Chinese restaurant to help me recover from my extreme gastrointestinal distress, we headed straight for the Shambles!

The Shambles is a historic street full of old houses. In practice, it was actually full of tourists like us, and most of the shops were peddling generic British souvenirs and gifts like Paddington bears and Harry Potter merchandise.

If I had brought a longer lens, I might have gotten a great shot of the York Minster towering over the street, but with a wide angle lens, it looks small and insignificant.

Then, we went to take photos of the York Minster. The architecture was truly amazing, but I underestimated the amount of buildings and trees surrounding it at close distance, so it was hard to get a photo without either extreme perspective distortion or occlusion.

The York Minster with extreme perspective distortion.

The York Minster occluded by a tree and building.

Afterwards, we headed back to York Station to appreciate the fine Victorian architecture. The station is really great with awesome wrought iron arches. However, there were lots of noisy and smelly diesel trains despite the electrification of the East Coast Main Line.

After getting back to London King’s Cross, we saw an Intercity 225 in a unique livery.

In the evening, we checked into the Chateau Denmark hotel, and had dinner at Din Tai Fung which was right next to our hotel at Tottenham Court Road.

7 Sunday, 2025-09-07: British Museum

In the morning, I went to do laundry. I found a laundromat, and walked 20 minutes to get there, but despite being usually open 7 days a week, it was unexpectedly closed due to a power outage. So I had to walk really far to another laundromat, near King’s Cross. There, I dropped off our laundry load for full service laundry.

Then, we had breakfast at Dishoom again, but at their Covent Garden location this time. It was pretty good I thought.

Akuri at Dishoom, a spicy scrambled egg with onions and stuff.

We headed straight for the complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir, which is famous on the internet due to numerous parodies and memes about it.

The famous complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir.

Having seen this meme tablet, we went for lunch at the Wolseley. Actually, originally, we wanted to get afternoon tea, but we didn’t read the fine print that says that they only serve afternoon tea after 3 pm, so with our 1:30 pm reservation we could only get lunch. It was Sunday, so I ate a Sunday roast. By now, my gastrointestinal disease had basically completely subsided, so I scarfed down the extreme amounts of meat, fried potatoes, horseradish, and Yorkshire pudding with no trouble.

Then, we walked back towards the hotel, along Piccadilly street, Regent Street, and other cool streets. Along the way, we saw the Royal Academy of Arts, so we went in. The main gallery was under renovation, so there were very few people, but they had a special exhibit on Kiefer/Van Gogh that cost £19 per person. Since Joanne loves Van Gogh, we paid the £38 and went in. Actually, there were only three small rooms with very few Van Gogh works (and also very few Kiefer works, but each one was quite large), so we came away feeling a little bit ripped off. In comparison, the amazing National Gallery is free and has a vastly larger collection. Still, art is art, and the art was good.

Later, I went back to the laundromat to pick up the laundry. Since it was near King’s Cross, and the weather was good, I went up to the rooftop of the Standard Hotel, the first hotel where we stayed, to take photos. It was funny going up with my big bag of laundry, but I got some good photos of, well, train stations.

In the evening, we went to Chinatown and ate at The Eight Restaurant. London’s Chinatown is very nice and walkable and very clean compared to San Francisco’s.

8 Monday, 2025-09-08: National Gallery

We went to the National Gallery. It was full of amazing artworks, and the architecture itself was beautiful also. As with other art museums in Europe, there were many paintings of Mary and baby Jesus, and while holding our own baby in our hands we felt a real connection to all the depictions of babies in art.

Another dome inside the National Gallery.

For lunch, we went to The Barbary in Covent Garden. The restaurant consists of a bar around a central kitchen and serves “exotic dishes inspired by the 16th-century Barbary Coast”.

Pork cheek. It was very tender and flavorful but the sauce was rather sweet.

We walked around Covent Garden and checked out some shops. We went to the Apple Market (a vintage flea market) in Covent Garden Market which was pretty cool. There was a guy selling vintage model cars and I saw lots of cool models, but they were very expensive.

Then, we went towards Westminster to check out the key landmarks of London. On the way, we passed by Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery again.

8.1 Westminster

For dinner, on the way back, we dined at Rasa Sayang, a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown. I ate the beef rendang and Joanne had the laksa. It was pretty decent, and very authentic.

9 Tuesday, 2025-09-09: Bath

In the morning, we took the Elizabeth Line to Paddington Station and caught a GWR train to Bath!

We checked into the Queensberry hotel. This hotel was amazing! It’s situated in a Georgian townhouse (well, most of Bath is comprised of Georgian townhouses) and it was extremely classy and pretty. In contrast with the Hoxton Edinburgh, which was also in a Georgian townhouse, the Queensberry was more old-school but was a lot more airy and had somewhat finer attention to detail.

Our room. Pardon the mess, we put down our stuff immediately because we were tired.

Then it was time to go sightseeing!

The Circus, a round array of townhouses surrounding a roundabout. Apparently, they have these sunken front gardens known as "areas" for drainage. — The Circus, a round array of townhouses surrounding a roundabout. Apparently, they have these sunken front gardens known as “areas” for drainage.

For lunch, we dined at the recently opened Emberwood restaurant located in the Francis Hotel. We had the pork belly, coal-roasted Cornish scallops, and Cornish hake.

Bath Abbey as seen from the Roman Baths.

Bath Abbey as seen from Bath City Parade Gardens.

For dinner, we went back to the Queensberry Hotel and dined at the Michelin Starred restaurant, The Olive Tree. Since we didn’t want to linger too long with the baby, we opted for the cheapest meal, the £100 three course menu. It was amazing!

Jersey royal potato with herring roe. This was a two centimeter diameter tiny little potato that was fried crispy and topped with herring roe. Very tasty little amuse-bouche to start with.
Cornish crab, Isle of Wight Tomato, Westcombe ricotta, ginger, basil. This was served in a stemmed bowl as though it were ice cream and quite delicious.
Black treacle and Rye bread, Ivy House clotted cream, roasted yeast, lamb fat. Very interesting spreads for the bread. The lamb fat had a slightly gritty texture but was extremely rich and melted in your mouth. The roasted yeast had a unique umami flavour, and the clotted cream had a wonderful milky fragrance.
Newlyn Market Lobster, cooked over Binchotan, sweetcorn, lovage, lemon verbena. The main course did not disappoint with its delicious lobster.
Oakchurch Farm Strawberries, sheep’s yogurt, Tahitian vanilla, rose, pink peppercorn. This dessert was almost like a sorbet with a nice acidity to it.
To finish: wine gummies and chocolate.

Overall, it was great and we enjoyed the meal a lot. However, baby started fussing, so we had to take turns holding him while eating.

Bread and three kinds of "butter": clotted cream, roasted yeast, and lamb fat. — Bread and three kinds of “butter”: clotted cream, roasted yeast, and lamb fat.

10 Wednesday, 2025-09-10: Back to London

The next day, it was very rainy, so we didn’t get to do much at all. We revisited some of the nice attractions from yesterday, but I didn’t get any good photos due to the rain and due to having to push the baby around. We had a casual lunch at Antica, an Italian restaurant situated near the Pulteney Bridge. We ate the Grigliata di Pesce, a gigantic tower consisting of grilled swordfish, sea bass, king prawns, mussels, and potatoes.

Then, we went and got matcha and coffee at WatchHouse. The matcha was very reminiscent of the colour of the bath water in the Roman Baths, but tasted much better.

Afterwards, without much ado, we headed to the Bath Spa station for the train back to London. We were a couple of hours early, but due to the rain, Joanne didn’t feel like exploring further with the baby. I walked back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage that we had left there in the morning.

St John the Evangelist's Church. — St John the Evangelist’s Church.

After lugging all my luggage back to Bath Station, I met a really rude station attendant by the name of Wayne who refused to let me go upstairs to where Joanne was waiting. Joanne had gone up to the platform level earlier since there was no lounge on the ground level. Somehow, Attendant Wayne most humiliatingly accused me of wanting to get on an earlier train when I wanted nothing of the sort. We had advance tickets with seat reservations with a specific time. He was unsympathetic when I told him about my wife and helpless infant child encumbered with a pram and heavy luggage, saying most snidely “you have a phone don’t you? why don’t you just call them to come down?”

When I was finally able to go up, to add injury to insult, I accidentally dropped my line scan camera by tugging on the USB cable too hard while it was resting on a slippery bench, and my brand new IR cut filter was smashed to pieces. The line scan photo didn’t even turn out that well as the top and bottom of the train were cut off, and due to the overcast weather, there wasn’t enough light and the image turned out rather grainy.

Line scan photo of British Rail Class 800 in GWR service.

In the afternoon, we arrived in Paddington Station.

Paddington Station. You can see the statue of the famous Paddington Bear just casually sitting next to the guy in a blue suit.

Due to the Tube strike, we could only take a taxi to our hotel. We waited about an hour at the taxi stand due to a ridiculously long queue. In the evening, we finally checked into our hotel at the London Marriott Hotel Kensington. We had the misfortune of being assigned room 147 which has no lift access and could only be accessed by climbing a flight of stairs. However, we were traveling with a baby with a stroller, and it was extremely inconvenient. Apparently, all the better rooms were taken because we arrived in the evening due to the Tube strike, so we had to make do with this inferior room despite paying just as much as anyone else. The porter was too busy idly chatting with other people to help us with our luggage, and the poor receptionist had to help us carry one of our suitcases up this flight of stairs out of sympathy. Thereafter, we had to carry the stroller up and down every day.

For dinner, we went to No. 10 Restaurant, which was actually quite decent. Their duck blood tasted rather good.

11 Thursday, 2025-09-11: Natural History Museum

For breakfast, we went to Cempaka for Malaysian breakfast. I had a tasty Nasi Lemak. It was extremely authentic. Then we went to the Natural History Museum. The exhibits were decent but the best part about it is the amazing architecture.

For lunch, we went to a random sushi restaurant called Cacciari’s Asia. It was better than expected, actually.

In the afternoon, I wanted to visit the river Thames for more sightseeing. At first, we considered going to the Victoria and Albert museum, but the weather was nice so we figured we might as well do some more daytime sightseeing while we had the chance. With the Tube strike still going on, we had to take a bus. This turned out to be a terrible decision since the bus was very crowded and slow and somehow at Westminster the bus driver abruptly announced that the bus was going to terminate there and we had to get off.

We gave up trying to go sightseeing, walked to Chinatown and grabbed a quick dinner at The Eight again (I got the beef curry with tornado egg rice, and Joanne got the three kinds of barbecue combo). Then we took the bus back.

At one point, we had to transfer buses, but the buses were so crowded that we gave up. Taxis were impossible to hail, so we called an Uber instead. We returned to the hotel late at night, extremely grumpy, and profoundly disappointed in the poor quality of transportation in London.

12 Friday, 2025-09-12: V&A Museum, Tower Bridge, and Downtown

For breakfast, we ate at La Terrazza in the Hotel Xenia across the street.

Then, we went to the V&A Museum. I was amazed by the architecture. The cast courts reminded me of the novel Piranesi.

Main entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Cast Court, containing casts (replicas) of many famous statues from around the world.

After enjoying the museum, we decided to check out Tower Bridge since the Tube was back in service and I felt like that was one of those things you’ve got to do when in London since it’s a famous landmark.

In retrospect, to fully appreciate Tower Bridge, it was probably better to cross one of the other bridges like London Bridge with a view of Tower Bridge instead. Then, for lunch, we headed to M.Manze Tower Bridge location. To our disappointment, despite being called “Tower Bridge location”, it was a long walk, about 20 minutes from the bridge with a stroller.

Pie and mash, with stewed eels in the background.

I really wanted to try the jellied eels, but they ran out and only had stewed eels. Oh well. The stewed eels were mild tasting and very, very soft, so they were quite easy to eat. You could even separate the meat from the bone with just your spoon. They were so mild that I didn’t feel the need to protonate the amines by dousing them in vinegar at all. The liquor (a weird name for parsley sauce) was also quite mild tasting for something so brilliantly green coloured. The pies were pretty decent and had hearty meat filling. The mash was buttery and soft. This was the cheapest meal of our trip by far. Overall, it was alright — not as bad as feared, but not super flavourful and amazing either. Maybe not worth the long walk, to be honest, but definitely good to try.

In the afternoon, we took the Tube a couple more stops and ended up somewhere near the Lloyd Building and Leadenhall Market, both of which were buildings I wanted to visit.

The Lloyd building retains the original facade in the corner, which you can see in the bottom right here.

Then, we went to Harrods. I was expecting an amazing beautiful mall but the inside was labyrinthine and claustrophobic, and quite depressing as it was utterly devoid of windows. The Food Halls in Harrods looked amazing, though, but I didn’t get any pictures since it was extremely crowded.

I was very disappointed with the poor quality kerning between the "A" and the "T" here. — I was very disappointed with the poor quality kerning between the “A” and the “T” here.

For dinner, we went to Med Salleh Viet - Earl’s Court. I was sceptical about whether London Vietnamese restaurants could compare with the amazing authentic Vietnamese food we have in San Jose, but this turned out to be wonderfully delicious. Joanne got the pho and I got the black pepper beef.

13 Saturday, 2025-09-13: Line scan photography and Kensington/Hyde Park

In the morning, we had a casual breakfast of a pastry, matcha, and coffee from Blank Street, and then I went to take line scan photos of trains! The 1973 Stock is getting retired next year, so I specifically sought a spot to take line scan photos of it. I managed to find a tiny gap in the fence at BP Car Wash just West of Baron’s Court.

Photo of the line scan camera in action.

Overall I’m pretty happy with these shots. Even with a cracked IR cut filter, it still worked and didn’t seem to impact the image quality too much.

Piccadilly Line at Earl's Court. — Piccadilly Line at Earl’s Court.

We grabbed a quick lunch at Addie’s Thai Restaurant. Then, we walked to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. It was raining very hard during the walk, but fortunately, the weather cleared up as soon as we arrived in the park.

We saw a lady feed the birds even though signs explicitly prohibited doing so.

For dinner, we dined at Macellaio RC South Kensington. We kind of missed the Florentine bistecca we had in Italy, so here was an opportunity to eat it again! We also got some really fatty but unique appetizers: a beef fat candle, and pork lard!

14 Sunday, 2025-09-14: Flight back

We got a taxi to Paddington Station and took the Heathrow Express to the airport.

For the long flight back, we basically had to just take turns holding baby for the entire duration since he did not like the very uncomfortable bassinet, but, as with the flight to the UK, he was very well behaved for the most part, and we got many compliments from fellow passengers.