A Weekend in London, First Part
Apr. 25th, 2005 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
c915 hours in a Boeing 767-300, 62 hours in the United Kingdom
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love East Dulwich
05:45 EDT April 21
We're awake, dressed, the cats are fed, and we're in a shuttle. Luckily, the shuttle is ours alone so the trip to Pearson isn't too painful. Air Canada feeds us excessively (breakfast at 1000 EDT/1500 GMT, lunch at 1300 EDT/1800GMT, plus lots of drinks and even ice cream! Not too bad.
21:30 GMT April 21
Off the plane, passports stamped, no luggage to collect (w00t!). Incidentally, I highly recommend not checking bags whenever you can avoid it. It really makes airports that much more enjoyable to completely avoid the meticulously planned and carefully designed baggage areas. We get tube tickets (Zone 1,2,3,4,5,6 single: £3.70 each) and take the 45 minute ride in the dark. There are faster routes, but the Heathrow Express costs more, and we wanted to save money roughly every second time we spent it this weekend. Save money every time? That's crazy talk.
Arrived at Paddington, found our way out onto the street. Every tube station has exits marked not with the word Exit, but rather bright yellow signs stating "WAY OUT." It's fantastic. We got to the hotel, slightly worried that they might figure out that 1+2=3 people, but our fears were unfounded. Found Scott, and got to relax!
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(I'm standing with my back to the far wall, with Scott's bed hidden out of frame. The room was both big by European standards, and tinytinytiny!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leapfish and I had no fun reliving the single-bed days of university residence again.
We were still wide awake of course, with the time difference. So a new underground ticket each, and off to Soho. Old Compton Road now has a permanent groove in it from us walking up and down several times, trying to decide where to go and what to do. Britain has a lovely set of laws governing drinking establishments (as does North America, actually) which describe pubs, bars, and clubs, each of which having their own set of rights, restrictions, hours of operation, and so forth. Some owners capitalize on this by running multiple businesses under the same name but with different licenses and locations. G-A-Y Bar and G-A-Y Club for example, or Balans Restaurant and Balans Bar.
They also capitalize in the more capitalist sense: not ordering food? £5 cover please! Sure, your drinks are cheap (relatively: £3.15 for a Smirnoff Ice, with most things on the menu being the same number of pounds as they would be dollars in Canada) but the cover makes up for it. We should have just ordered some food.
The Smirnoff Ice bottles are actually not as good a deal as we thought, once we looked more closely: they were mini versions, with only 250mL compared to the 355mL in a North American bottle. We made up for this Saturday night by getting our alcohol at the grocery store in big 700mL versions. I felt like I was taking shrinking and growing pills like Alice in Wonderland.
The underground stops running by 01:00, so our return tube tickets were actually useless by the time we were done with a couple drinks. No problem: there are buses! Should be easy, we thought. Only problem was finding a bus stop. Then the only problem was finding the correct bus stop. Then figuring out which bus to take. The realizing our tube tickets wouldn't get us back to the hotel. And the buses didn't take money, we had to buy tickets first. But we needed change. And we didn't need the sketchy guys trying to sell us their bus passes for one pound each. OK, so I guess we had a couple problems. But we figured them all out, bought tickets, caught the bus, got to the general neighbourhood of the hotel, walked for 15 minutes or so, then finally we were back and able to hit the sack. It was only about 9pm in Kitchener, but we were exhausted, so we decided it was OK.
It appears that I'm not as adaptable to small beds as I was back in university, eons ago (1995-2000). I woke up with a muscle pulled or something in my back: definitely not fun. But really, it was only par for the course for the hotel room. The kitchenette is only eight inches wide, but four feet deep. The toilet sits at a ten degree engle. The shower's pressure was reminiscent of the pressure exerted by a child to avoid dessert: "No really, I couldn't." Hell, the *hallway* was pretty mesed up, looking more like a suspension bridge in the way it sagged between supporting columns. Plus the four steps up, then three steps down immediately afterward, followed by another single step up -- it reminded me of Maggie Jean or original Immaculata! Built gradually as needed, it seemed, with little regard for lining things up.
TOday's plans involved Matt M joining us from whereever it is that he is again, I always forget. Cambridge? Oxford? Some fancy-pants university, where he's busy being all smart and stuff. Anyway, he took the train in for 90 minutes just to hang out with us for a bit, then disappear again! We saw the Tate Modern, with Picasso and Warhol and all sorts of other things I didn't recognize at all. HUGE museum, we only saw one floor of it. I found a poster I liked and should have purchased, but for the price (£12). It was a map of the London Underground, but rather than that title, it carried "The Great Bear." And rather than the station names, each line was a list of journalists, politicians, philosophers, artists, musicians, etc. It was really neat to see.
Next plan: see Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Nobody interested except me, and as it turns out the tour I was on time for was already full, so rather than wait I just caught up to the gang and we headed for a pub for a drink instead. I askedleapfish to buy a drink for me, so he got me a Smirnoff Ice. I sorta stood out in the classic English pub. Even skaughty was drinking beer. He *never* drinks beer!
After Matt left, we moved on to the Eye, or more specifically the British Airways London Eye. A huge (ferris) wheel on the bank of the River Thames, it rises over 140m into the air. Sounds little, but it's pretty big!
Next post: pictures from high in the sky!
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love East Dulwich
05:45 EDT April 21
We're awake, dressed, the cats are fed, and we're in a shuttle. Luckily, the shuttle is ours alone so the trip to Pearson isn't too painful. Air Canada feeds us excessively (breakfast at 1000 EDT/1500 GMT, lunch at 1300 EDT/1800GMT, plus lots of drinks and even ice cream! Not too bad.
21:30 GMT April 21
Off the plane, passports stamped, no luggage to collect (w00t!). Incidentally, I highly recommend not checking bags whenever you can avoid it. It really makes airports that much more enjoyable to completely avoid the meticulously planned and carefully designed baggage areas. We get tube tickets (Zone 1,2,3,4,5,6 single: £3.70 each) and take the 45 minute ride in the dark. There are faster routes, but the Heathrow Express costs more, and we wanted to save money roughly every second time we spent it this weekend. Save money every time? That's crazy talk.
Arrived at Paddington, found our way out onto the street. Every tube station has exits marked not with the word Exit, but rather bright yellow signs stating "WAY OUT." It's fantastic. We got to the hotel, slightly worried that they might figure out that 1+2=3 people, but our fears were unfounded. Found Scott, and got to relax!
(I'm standing with my back to the far wall, with Scott's bed hidden out of frame. The room was both big by European standards, and tinytinytiny!
leapfish and I had no fun reliving the single-bed days of university residence again.We were still wide awake of course, with the time difference. So a new underground ticket each, and off to Soho. Old Compton Road now has a permanent groove in it from us walking up and down several times, trying to decide where to go and what to do. Britain has a lovely set of laws governing drinking establishments (as does North America, actually) which describe pubs, bars, and clubs, each of which having their own set of rights, restrictions, hours of operation, and so forth. Some owners capitalize on this by running multiple businesses under the same name but with different licenses and locations. G-A-Y Bar and G-A-Y Club for example, or Balans Restaurant and Balans Bar.
They also capitalize in the more capitalist sense: not ordering food? £5 cover please! Sure, your drinks are cheap (relatively: £3.15 for a Smirnoff Ice, with most things on the menu being the same number of pounds as they would be dollars in Canada) but the cover makes up for it. We should have just ordered some food.
The Smirnoff Ice bottles are actually not as good a deal as we thought, once we looked more closely: they were mini versions, with only 250mL compared to the 355mL in a North American bottle. We made up for this Saturday night by getting our alcohol at the grocery store in big 700mL versions. I felt like I was taking shrinking and growing pills like Alice in Wonderland.
The underground stops running by 01:00, so our return tube tickets were actually useless by the time we were done with a couple drinks. No problem: there are buses! Should be easy, we thought. Only problem was finding a bus stop. Then the only problem was finding the correct bus stop. Then figuring out which bus to take. The realizing our tube tickets wouldn't get us back to the hotel. And the buses didn't take money, we had to buy tickets first. But we needed change. And we didn't need the sketchy guys trying to sell us their bus passes for one pound each. OK, so I guess we had a couple problems. But we figured them all out, bought tickets, caught the bus, got to the general neighbourhood of the hotel, walked for 15 minutes or so, then finally we were back and able to hit the sack. It was only about 9pm in Kitchener, but we were exhausted, so we decided it was OK.
It appears that I'm not as adaptable to small beds as I was back in university, eons ago (1995-2000). I woke up with a muscle pulled or something in my back: definitely not fun. But really, it was only par for the course for the hotel room. The kitchenette is only eight inches wide, but four feet deep. The toilet sits at a ten degree engle. The shower's pressure was reminiscent of the pressure exerted by a child to avoid dessert: "No really, I couldn't." Hell, the *hallway* was pretty mesed up, looking more like a suspension bridge in the way it sagged between supporting columns. Plus the four steps up, then three steps down immediately afterward, followed by another single step up -- it reminded me of Maggie Jean or original Immaculata! Built gradually as needed, it seemed, with little regard for lining things up.
TOday's plans involved Matt M joining us from whereever it is that he is again, I always forget. Cambridge? Oxford? Some fancy-pants university, where he's busy being all smart and stuff. Anyway, he took the train in for 90 minutes just to hang out with us for a bit, then disappear again! We saw the Tate Modern, with Picasso and Warhol and all sorts of other things I didn't recognize at all. HUGE museum, we only saw one floor of it. I found a poster I liked and should have purchased, but for the price (£12). It was a map of the London Underground, but rather than that title, it carried "The Great Bear." And rather than the station names, each line was a list of journalists, politicians, philosophers, artists, musicians, etc. It was really neat to see.
Next plan: see Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Nobody interested except me, and as it turns out the tour I was on time for was already full, so rather than wait I just caught up to the gang and we headed for a pub for a drink instead. I asked
leapfish to buy a drink for me, so he got me a Smirnoff Ice. I sorta stood out in the classic English pub. Even skaughty was drinking beer. He *never* drinks beer!After Matt left, we moved on to the Eye, or more specifically the British Airways London Eye. A huge (ferris) wheel on the bank of the River Thames, it rises over 140m into the air. Sounds little, but it's pretty big!
Next post: pictures from high in the sky!
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Date: 2005-04-25 07:28 pm (UTC)