Quick follow up. I had sort of intended to do a trip report, but never got that far.

We did get upgraded, both ways, for which we were very thankful. We were late landing in Dublin, and missed our connection. Wheelchair assist was completely overwhelmed, and did not send enough wheelchairs. Since I AM ambulatory, I left them for other people and tried to go as quickly as possible with DS for the connection, without luck. Dublin Airport was very obviously not having a good morning. After being shepherded into the baggage hall with a whole bunch of other people who had missed their connections (supposedly our baggage was coming there), we were finally able to get a wheelchair person (I was about to sit down on the floor, cry, and refuse to go any farther), and get put on another flight.

Our baggage was supposedly going on that flight as well, but as it turned out that didn't happen. We did get some rather nice salmon while waiting for the new flight (fortunately), and had a coffee on the plane. Heathrow was doing much better with wheelchair assist, but then our baggage didn't turn up, and we finally discovered that it was being put on on another plane, to arrive in about three hours. They would have delivered it to the hotel, but we didn't really trust that and elected to wait since we had missed our bus anyway. Wheelchair guy had to leave, but he left us the wheelchair, which helped. DS was very patient about wheeling me around the baggage hall. Thank goodness for personal electronics. And vending machines, although we had not actually intended to have crisps for lunch. The luggage did finally turn up, and we gave them back their wheelchair and left the baggage hall.

At that point we just gave up on the bus tickets and had a service get us a minicab. DS was a trooper through all of this, but we just wanted to go to the hotel, shower, change clothes, and get some food.

First hotel was okay (Montcalm at the Brewery). Staff was great, but the club arrangements were weird, some of the furniture was very worn, room was small, and they didn't really have a functioning restaurant. It also seems to be an event facility with a hotel attached, rather than the other way round. After we were no longer personally offensive, we had a drink in the club level, and went across the street to the Cote at the Barbican, where we had a very good dinner from their three course festive menu, along with a bottle of wine.

Next day, we collected our new phones from Argos (which was also quite a thing, since they didn't seem to know what they were doing, and we didn't know what we were doing either, and we didn't get both phones working until Sunday, after visits to two separate cell phone stores) and made our way to Victoria Station for the tea bus. We nearly missed this, because there are two tea busses and we turned up for the wrong one, but we did catch it, and were very pleased with it. Tea is quite good, it's a nice drive, and the attendant was great. There is no commentary, so I'd only recommend it if you mostly know what you're going past. We even saw people mudlarking!

Then we went to Harrod's, browsed a little, and got some stuff from the food hall to eat. Since we were exhausted, I sprung for a cab back, and we had snacks in the club level and hotel room picnic for dinner.

Saturday we were just a little slow to get moving, and it took a bit to transfer hotels, so we didn't get as far as Camden Market, and wandered around Kensington, visiting charity shops and M&S. We also had tea at Caffe Concerto. Second hotel (Royal Garden Kensington) was very good, with a MUCH bigger room, and just generally better run and seemed a bit higher on the food chain.

Sunday we visited a farmer's market, had Sunday lunch, briefly visited the Natural History Museum, and spent a fair amount of time in the V&A, especially in jewelry, which is an interest of both of ours, and had Wagamama for dinner.

Monday we walked to Regent Street and visited Hamleys, Liberty, John Lewis, Selfridges, the Disney store, and finally Fortnum and Mason. We took a cab back from Fortnum and Mason to the hotel. That was a lot of walking.

Tuesday we did a little more shopping (mostly Waitrose, which all went into the suitcase), and went out to our hotel near Heathrow, which was fine, if very quiet, and club level was closed, so instead we got a drink voucher and a couple of finger sandwiches. At least their restaurant was functional and fairly reasonable, since we had decided to shelve Toby Carvery. DS also rolled over on his phone while we were watching TV and accidentally called 999. He was mortified and extremely apologetic, and the woman on the other end seemed to find it a little funny (I suppose a confused American is a break from the actual emergencies).

Our flight to London was delayed the next morning, and when we got to Dublin Airport, they were clearly again not having a good morning at all. And they took us off onto the tarmac, and all the wheelchairs went to the wrong gate. I did manage, but I was pretty tired by the time we made it to the gate. In theory we would have been late, but in practice they seemed to be holding all of those flights to North America until they had rounded up all the passengers that were definitely in the system and on their way. Once we were on the plane, and in our big comfy seats, we sat there for at least an hour while people straggled in (including one for the wrong flight entirely, which was exciting). We were also incredibly grateful for those big comfy seats, because that plane was PACKED. Sardine city. They had obviously resold our original seats, and had needed to move people from pre selected seats and put them in others. The last few stragglers were made to check their cabin bags too.

In summation, we had a great time. Wished we could have done a little more (especially the Imperial War Museum, originally scheduled for the afternoon we spent in Heathrow's baggage hall instead). It was essentially our own personal episode of "Heathrow, Britain's Busiest Airport", which is one of DS's favorite shows. We like traveling around Christmas, despite the logistical complications, and lack of light, but I may try a summer trip this year. Speaking of, I like Aer Lingus, but we are NEVER again booking a tight connection through Dublin Airport. It's a maze, their floors are evil, and obviously things like the wheelchair service fall apart when they are busy. After our airport adventures, I was afraid that I might have been ambitious about the amount of walking I was up to, but it was fine, and it is good for me to walk when I can. I paid for more cabs than I had really intended to, but otherwise we were able to stay mostly in budget, and we brought home a lot of goodies for Christmas feasting (including a Waitrose selection of Farmhouse cheeses that traveled to America in my purse, and some pasta we bought at the farmer's market. I did buy some Christmas crackers, but Heathrow's security wouldn't let me bring them on the plane (so sad, but we do mostly follow the rules).