The adventure begins in London!

I happily got on the flight to London from Atlanta. It went great. We boarded on time and left on time. Unfortunately, I got stuck in coach so I didn't have much room, but I got an aisle seat so that helped. I also met three interesting and helpful people.

Bernie is from Manchester, England. He had flown to Atlanta for a funeral and was returning home. I learned from him that there are essentially four types of roads in the UK: A, B, C, and M. M is the equivalent of an interstate, except it doesn't get over four lanes wide. The others are in terms of width/number of lanes. The C type of road is a small one lane road with pull-off spots here and there, and drivers play chicken with each other to see who is going to pull over first.

Christiana is from Atlanta, and her husband is military stationed in England. She and his boss conspired to have her fly over and surprise him. Her sister regularly travels, and I got some great information about trains and the Underground (their subway system). An interesting thing I haven't had to deal with yet: in Europe, credit cards have security chips in them, and sometimes merchants won't want to accept the card (it will decline when they run it through). But if you tell them to manually key it in, it should work.

Julie is from Arkansas and is flying to London for the first time, to meet her husband (who knew she was coming). I sat next to her the entire flight, and we helped each other figure out where to go after we got off the plane. We had lunch together at the airport, which was tasty.

 


I'm still trying to figure out British money, specifically their coinage versus the paper money. Before I left Atlanta, I exchanged about $100 for about $59 British notes, which felt like a rip-off, haha. The exchange rate is about 1.5 to 1. So after a few casual purchases, I have the following coins:
5 - 2 pounds
3 - 1 pounds
3 - 50 pence
2 - 20 pence
2 - 10 pence
1- 2 pence
1 - 1 pence
15 pounds 13 pence (£15.13)

Plus I still have 20 pounds in paper money. I think I read somewhere that buses need exact change, so I'll probably want to hang on to some of those coins, but those 2 pound ones need to go, I think.

I'm staying at the Lancaster Hotel in London. I got a fantastic deal. Apparently London is super expensive (like New York), but additionally the paralympics are in town as well as some fashion show, so no rooms were available, but when they were, they were going for £300 up to £700 apiece, which is crazy money. But as I was standing at the desk, a hotel phoned in with a cancellation and they were willing to charge only £80 per night. That's about $120, but in London, and in a pinch, that's a good price.

 

Getting there was an adventure, which I'll describe in a minute. First, lunch: there was a nice...would it be considered a pub? It had several tables and a bar, and you order your food at the bar and they cook it and bring it out to you. Julie got a burger with fries (chips) and onion rings, and I kid you not, the burger had these enormous onion rings ON THE BURGER! I got the fish and chips. The fish was AN ENTIRE COD. I can feel my cholesterol jacking up just thinking about it...but it was good. All of it. So were the chips (fries), which I ate most of. Oddly, they also served it with a side of peas, which were good.

After lunch, Julie went off to the express train towards Paddington station to meet her husband, and I went the opposite direction to the Underground, which had a station under the airport. The fare to Holborn cost around £5.30, I think, and took about an hour. I kept almost nodding off in my seat, I know the guys across from me were watching me. Everyone rode sideways, except of course for the people having to stand up. I had my big bag in a seat, which I would have moved for someone to sit, but I couldn't stay awake well enough to guard it.

When they say Underground, they really mean underground. When I got off at Holborn station, I went down a flight of stairs and then up two enormous escalators. I must have been over eighty feet below street level at least. When I finally got up to the street, I found someone to ask directions of, and proceeded to walk at least six blocks to the hotel. After I got checked in, I went and collapsed on the bed.

This room is tiny, it's smaller than the smallest Econolodge I ever stayed at in the states. There is enough room for a single twin bed, a couple of small pieces of furniture, and a shower and sink in the corner. The bathroom is down the hall. I'm not a fan of showering in this room; the shower door is an accordion type with an open space, so all the heat and humidity from the shower goes into the room, and made it unbearable to be in until I got the concierge to bring up a room fan. That said, the people are nice, and the room itself is clean. But man, the bed is as stiff as a board, and they tucked in the sheets so tight I had to pry them loose.

At dinner time, I crossed a small park nearby to a little dining district, and found a place called Pret a Manger (French for "ready to eat"), a little sandwich shop. I just sat inside and watched people walk by outside. I wonder if there is a university around, I saw a lot of people with guitar cases at the train station, and a fair number of groups of young people walking around tonight.

I guess the next thing for tonight is to plan my day tomorrow. I'm going to try to get an early start, sight-see for 4-5 hours, and then return to the hotel to work. 3 pm London time is 10 am Atlanta time. :)