London Trip Mar 2017 Day 1 ~ SQ flight, Holiday Inn Ashford, Ashford Factory Outlet

Finally to my next travelogue on my second leg of the Black Belt training, to Ashford!

Luckily, this time I was able to take SQ flight, given how bored I was on board Swiss Air during my flight to Zurich.

At transit area of Terminal 3! The Kitchen by Wolfgang Puck was finally opened then. 


First visit to T3 Butterfly Garden, but honestly... nothing much lol. All I saw was specimens of butterflies. But the lighting was too dark to capture any decent photos.



As I was just wondering around alone, I dint spend much time exploring and boarded the plane soon. I chose an isle seat since I frequent the bathroom and I cant usually sleep on board.

Supper and breakfast menu on SQ flight.



Watching RM while waiting for supper to be served.




Supper! I had the Chicken dish.


As usual, I couldnt slp on board and ended up getting snacks while entertaining myself with the entertainment system haha.


And finally, it was time for breakfast! Which meant almost reaching London!


Finally arrived!


However, there was an extremely long and slow queue at the immigration. Think I spent 2 hours clearing immigration, which my colleague took even longer than me at another terminal. So I guess the long waiting time is quite a norm..


So, after a long flight and a long wait at the airport, we finally met our chauffeur at the airport who drove us all the way to our hotel in Ashford which was 1.5 hours away! Thank goodness for the arrangement!

The hotel which we stayed in was Holiday Inn. We had a good nap on the way and arrived at the hotel rather refreshed haha. Great that we were able to check in early as well.

Snacks with compliments from SQ lol.



The hotel room.




After offloading our stuff, we left for the Factory Outlet shortly. That's probably the only decent shopping area in that area sadly. We took a bus from the stop outside the hotel towards the train station. 
Bus fare was rather expensive, think was about 2GBP each ride.

Entrance of the Factory Outlet.


Eating area near the entrance.



Cookies! Sadly unable to capture a nice photo thanks to the reflection :(





Huge carpark.



There wasn't much stuff there actually. We spent around less than 2 hours and finished walking through the whole area, and back to the eating area again haha.



And decided to settle late lunch there, having the world famous fish and chips. This is my only close rendition of the famous UK Fish and Chips. Grilled fish and Salad lol.


After lunch, we took the bus back to the town centre. We thought that the Town Centre would be the most happening place there.
But it was just slightly better than Geneva on a Sat afternoon LOL.





We left the Town Centre shortly and made our way back to the hotel. We decided to walk back since the bus ride is expensive haha. And also to kill some time.


This is the road leading back to the hotel, and I took this photo not realising what this is. 
Is actually a cemetery. 



My loot from Poundland! Chocolates and chips are cheap there!


For dinner, we settled it at Harvester opposite.



I had the Pork Ribs. Dint expect the portion to be so huge!


Free flow salad that comes with every mains ordered. 


My very filling dinner!


And this marks the end of the first long day! To be continued with our Sunday before training starts!

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