Today wound up being a pretty mellow day once I got into London. I grabbed a really quick dinner from Pret a Manger, which wound up being a UK chain restaurant, but it was the first restaurant I could see from my hotel window so it won that honor of being my first restaurant here. Then I hopped back on the Underground. Since the main central lines are under construction this weekend (probably before the Olympics in 2012), I kept using the Picadilly line, which got crowded enough for the conductor to tell people to wait for the next train, but honestly after having experienced the sardine-in-a-can/probably safety hazard of Hong Kong subways, I will never ever be fazed by any other subway.
I got off at Hyde Park to take a stroll but since the weather wasn't great, I kept thinking how much nicer the park would look on a nice day. Decided to venture in without a map to get lost and wound up finding my way out in the end - progress! Seeing the emptiness of the park and the boats still tied up on the Serpentine was kind of a depressing sight though, so then I hopped back on the Tube to Picadilly, which was like NYC's Times Square and Chinatown combined into one, with neon lights and theaters and the required Ripley's Believe It or Not with tons of souvenir shops and annoying solicitors and tiny Chinese restaurants. This elderly British man tried to make odd conversation with me at a street crossing and the whole time I kept thinking, "Don't even try to steal my purse." =)
I don't feel like I'm on vacation yet, but hopefully that will change tomorrow once it settles in my mind that it's Monday and I am not working. I almost felt it today when I was getting ready to get on the plane, but I didn't have that moment of panic/excitement with knowing that I'm by myself for the next 3 weeks. It could be that I still have my laptop with me, so I'm still connected all the time. Or it could be that I'm basically just doing sightseeing stuff until I hit my adventure-mode in Iceland. At least my cell phone doesn't work in Europe! I had this brief moment of madness where I was going to check my work e-mail today, but after I took a nap my thoughts were clear and I just let it go.
Tomorrow is expected to have some light rain, so I am holding off on all the outdoor sights until Tuesday. I might try Tower of London or Westminster Abbey or the British Museum depending on what the weather is like. Also the goal tomorrow is to find a good fish-and-chips place OR a good meat pie place. My addiction began in New Zealand and this is the motherland so there's got to be good grub here. This is how I will judge at the end how good my trip is when I get back home:
- Weight Gain =< 1 lb = Average vacation
- Weight Gain >= 3 lbs = Good vacation
- Weight Gain >= 5 lbs = Great vacation
