'cause I owe a 'we're in London' post...

Arrived early on Wednesday, successfully navigated the trains from Gatwick to London, found my hotel with absolutely no problem, looked once again at my ticket to discover HOLY F*CK my return ticket was for 16 April, not 9 April! One phone call to the airline later, I'm a chunk poorer, but at least I'm going home the same week I expected to. Ugh. I can only blame my own stupidity. Because even if I didn't make the original mistake while ordering, I certainly received confirmation emails from the airline which contained the dates in question. Ugh.

So far: I can still recommend Zoom Airlines. The original fare (ahem) was cheap enough, and they served two meals (sort of): a sandwich at 11pm, and a full hot breakfast: omlette, hash-browns, a slice of tomato, a fresh fruit cup, a pretty-good roll and butter, and tea. Points to them.

The hotel room is smallish but quite servicable, and has wifi.

Yesterday, I hung around the room until d. showed up, the we went touristing for the afternoon (down near Trafalgar Square) and ate dinner at a gastro-pub.

Hm. I'd write more, but we should go eat as it's 7:30. Later! (and no, I don't believe that I could qualify for boutell's "I'm too tired to blog about Europe" contest...)

Today

I woke up this morning to chirping birds- a variety I don't think we have in North America, or at least they've got a different dialect here. We took a double-decker bus into town, whose route included most of Abbey Road. I happened to see a gmaps_sights post from two weeks ago with the Beatles Abbey Road crossing from above (!) so I think I recognized it when we rode over. Hee.

Today's itenary included: back to Trafalgar Square, walking down to Parliament, the Queen's Horse Guards station, 10 Downing Street and Westiminster Abbey, to London Bridge, along a river-walk to London Tower, looking across the water at The Eye (the gargantuan ferris-wheel on the waterfront) and deciding we'd go and take it before we leave.

Next, up to Harrods, which turns out to be the neatest department store I've ever browsed. More ritzy than Macy's, and considerably less packed with people. I couldn't afford to buy a pencil there, but I did OK browsing. There's a stuffed animal recreation of the Globe Theatre on floor 4 that was neat. I wasn't even treated snootily by Harrods staff, which I was vaguely afraid of.

Lunch was across the street from Harrods, where we had tasty sandwiches that weren't too shockingly expensive, and there was great people-watching from our window seats.

We walked in Hyde Park, and made our way to Speaker's Corner. The first disappointment of the day: there were no speakers at all! Hmph. I thought about standing and making a harrangue about the lazy people who didn't show up to give their Speaker's Corner harrangues. Dan convinced me against that though.

Eventually back down to Westminster Abbey, where d. had the bright idea of going to hear their church service and see the inside without springing the 10 pounds that tourists usually pay. The evensong service was beautiful, and oh gods, what a beautiful church. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable, actually- and not even because there are some number of Important People entombed under the floors. It's hard to explain, but the opulance just sort of screamed out "power" and not in a necessarily good way. Still, very glad we went.

Back at the hotel, we went a bit further up the road to dinner at a South Asian restaurant named "Elephant Walk", which served us delicious dosai.

I'm definitely enjoying myself here. Wish I had two weeks. (Well; I could've had two weeks if I weren't going to be inconviencing my boss and paying to stay in hotels for an additional week. Ah well. It'll still be here for next time.)