Day #3
Arriving at London
Ouch! 13-14 hours on a plane, what a killer. Thank God (again) for the movies-on-demand. It seems now that people don’t measure flights in hours but rather how many movies it takes to watch (I watched "Stranger than Fiction", "Flags of our fathers", "Casino Royale"). I tried to get some sleep as the flight was 11pm -> 5am (I wish it was only 6 hours … 8 hours lost on time zone change) but I only managed to get a total of about 1 hour (by my calculations).
Heathrow Airport doesn't measure up to either Brisbane Airport or Changi Airport in my opinion. The staff were a lot less friendly (although at 5am who is), and there didn’t seem to be any flight attendants/pilots anywhere (unlike the other airports). There didn’t seem to be the shopping areas like the others either (however we did go to terminal 4 and there were 3 other terminals I didn’t see). We went to nice restaurant and had some hot breakfast.
I walked outside to check the air temperature. Hmm … not too cold.
Got changed in the toilets (one of the things I hate about travelling is having to get clothes in/out of suitcases and get changed in uncomfortable places). Jumped on a Tube Train from Heathrow to Earl's Court. The tube trains are fun. Very clean and modern. They are underground for part of the way and above ground for part. This was good for me because I could look at the town outside the train. I sat down opposite Amy and a guy with questionable smells sat next to me and starting talking to me in mangled English (I couldn't tell whether this was because he had mental health issues/foreign/drunk or a combination of all 3). There was a seat between us and this poor little girl got on the train and unwittingly sat between us. I got up to give her some room (and a chance to sit further away from this guy). She seemed fascinated by Amy & I and was trying to check out our luggage to see where we had come from.
We arrived at Earl's court station to discover we were about 2 storey underground (The London Tube is a criss-cross of train lines intersecting in 3 dimensions). This was not fun with luggage but we discovered a lift to the surface (I loved the elevator voice that said in a female cockney accent "doors closing - please stand clear". I almost expected it to say "oi guvner!, you right?". Another guy kept yelling out to everybody "Mind the gap!".
Earl's Court
My first real culture shock occurred when I got to the surface. London (certainly this area of London) definitely does not look anything like Brisbane, Everybody was rugged up (the British are wooses, they rug up a lot more than I do here). The buildings are a lot older and are packed together. The streets are narrow and mostly one-way (I later discovered that London has "main" streets with "side" streets between them (about 1:3 ratio). They a very narrow and it feels kind of cosy to me).
I love London so far. The people are not as friendly as Australians, although they open up (generally) when you talk to them, and I have not had any problems with them. The population I have seen is generally a mix of whites, blacks, and Eastern Europeans (with a small splash of other cultures after that - e.g. the guy who looks after our apartment is Polish). We arrived at our place of stay, "Earls Court Studios".
The reception (the Polish guy) was helpful. I asked him where he was from originally and he said "guess". Amy guessed "Swedish" and he laughed. He admitted he was Polish. I asked him to guess from my accent, after a short pause he said (uncertainly) "Australia" (better guess than us), he nicely let us leave our bags there until check-in time.
There must be a lot of crime in London, a police car with sirens blaring would fly past about every 10 minutes. The place looks old and seems a bit rundown (although a lot of renovations going on, and every 4th car was a BMW) but I think the character is changing as wealthy tourists (not us … ;) brings tourist money in.
We went to a newsagents and bought some phone-cards and then went to a phone box (London has phone boxes and Internet Cafes roughly every 10 metres - They have amazing compression when it comes to shops and facilities), and then tested out their phone cards (I rang Colin in Australia ;). From there we went to an Internet Café to check e-mail and then went to the post office. Post Office staff are very unfriendly and are behind (probably tempered) glass. They were quite defensive and I would say have a lot of confrontations with the public, There were a lot of signs around about not assaulting the staff.
London is very cold and you are always encouraged to head indoors for a coffee/hot drink (except that is always hot inside and you feel like you have a fever from the constant temperature changes). We decided to have lunch at McDonalds. We got our lunch and headed upstairs.
While eating a lunch, a black lady (in corporate outfit) was sitting with paper and her mobile phone on the table. While she was sitting there, a couple of young women came up, threw a map on the table and asked for directions. She told them "no, I don’t know where that is." (she looked a bit annoyed at there overtness). They then left quickly. I looked over at her, then she looked at me with a "what was that all about" look, I looked back and shrugged my shoulders. She then immediately jumped up and shouted "THOSE BASTARDS!!! THEY STOLE MY PHONE!!". She rang out to chase them but was too late. She came back swearing and cursing, and said to me "You saw those bastards, I am not making this up". I said "I saw them put the map on the table, I didn’t see them take the phone". The manager then called the police (hence another one of those 10 minute sirens ;). A couple of teenage girls sitting nearby looked on in disgust at the circumstances. One said: "Were they English?". The victim said "No, they were foreigners", to which the teenager said "This is why I left South London". All very amusing.
After lunch we went on the London Tube again from Earl's Court to Piccadily Circus. We surfaced at Regent Street (yes … travelling through London is like playing a game of monopoly ;), and then visited the London Visitor's centre. While there it started snowing (albeit briefly). This was my first taste of snow but was more of a tease as there wasn't very much of it.
We had to meet Sarah (Friend of Amy) at 4pm at Giraffe Restaurant so I decided to take us on the scenic route. We walked down Pall Mall down to a place called Clarence House (home of the Queen Mother, and later Prince Charles) then to Green Park (which had nice flower gardens) and then on to Buckingham Palace. The Imperial Guards ;) are wearing grey (what is this? I thought they wore red. Grey must be their winter uniform) We then walked down Birdcage Walk and it started snowing again. Just when I got excited, it stopped. GRRR!!!. (It was also very cold). We then walked past Parliament House and Big Ben (It wasn’t as big as I expected it to be - I guess I have been spoilt by skyscrapers ;). We crossed Westminster Bridge and finally arrived at Giraffe Restaurant.
After a few drinks Sarah arrived and we ordered drinks & dinner, shortly after her friend Kate turned up and we all had dinner. At 6:30pm Sarita arrived and we unloaded whole bunches of aussie food on her (whew! More luggage dispensed with). After dinner, we saw them off (they had to go on a different tube line) and Amy & I walked back to the "Embankment" tube station. This was our first night here and it was very cold (my ears started to hurt, it was so cold). Because I had only had 1 hours sleep in the past 48 hours once we walked through the door I collapsed unconscious.
