I just noticed that I seem to have inadvertently adopted the rather bland writing style of announcement/remarks/sentiment. I’ll try to mix it up a bit from here.
I’m in London! Apparently it’s warm. Ha! The hotel’s WiFi is a rip off so I’m using a 50p data sim from Vodafone UK instead. The reception inside the hotel is piss poor so I’m sitting out front while I write this. Already I can’t feel my hands. I can only imagine what Moscow will be like. It’s a good 15° cooler there. Fortunately, I got all my shopping out of the way yesterday, jet lagged and freezing; scarfs, a jumper, ¾ length jacket, gloves, beanies… bring it on, frosty!
Shopping on Oxford St was an experience. Think miles of continuous Pitt St Mall with 4 times as many people and >100 year old buildings everywhere, with modern brands decals in every window. Thanks to the unusually strong Aussie dollar of January 2011, nothing is anywhere near as expensive here as people make out. On the contrary, I’ve found most expenses lower than Sydney equivalents.
Just backtracking a smidge, I caught up with Mike for the first time in 5 months when I landed at Heathrow just over 24 hours ago. He was holding a sign with my name on it, pretending to be a limo guy. For anyone who doesn’t know, Mike is a good friend and a man of the kind of outrageous character that’s in frustratingly short supply. For this and this alone, yesterday was a good day.
And then there was this.
We caught the London tube (underground subway system) from the airport to the hotel. There’s not much to be said about them; they’re just trains. Being used to Sydney’s double-decker trains, I thought the use of space was a little inefficient, but they didn’t clutter the carriages with too many seats, which left more room for standing – and boy did they need it. Aussie train commuters don’t know what crowding is. Unless they’ve been on the London tube, or something similar.
The hotel is nothing like my dear friends at STA described it. It’s an ancient town-house type deal with creaky floorboards and pull-strings for light switches. The room is tiny, old and a bit on the derelict side. Not that it really matters, because I’m not planning on doing much here beyond sleeping and the occasional alcohol-induced misadventure.
We took a stroll along the Thames last night, winding up in a latino bar at 12:10am, only to discover they’d stopped serving drinks. It seems they weren’t alone; even at 10pm, many places had already shut. We should have twigged to something when we started seeing pissed up poms around every corner at 9:30, but I guess the notion that night life in one of the greatest cities in the world would grind to an anticlimactic halt at midnight on a Saturday was just too far-fetched to make it into the contingency plan. Nevertheless, we spotted Big Ben and Buckingham Palace on the cab ride back, which was nice.
Cab ride? What? Oh yeah. The underground stops at midnight. Even on Saturday. Ok, London, we get the hint.
Sleep was very, very welcome. I was awake from 7am Friday Sydney time, to 2:30am Sunday London time. Do the math if you want; it’s a marathon. But I was too excited to care. Heck, I still am. I’m in London baby!
