Across The Pond

Here we are across the pond. At this point we have been to the loo and eaten fish and chips.  Not necessarily in that order.   Our car service drove us to our hotel on the wrong side of the road while sitting in the right hand passenger seat complete with steering wheel, petrol pedal (I'm guessing here) and a brake pedal that Sue would love to have in the States when I am driving.

Our first day had us checking into our room and crashing for about an hour.  Anyone who claims to sleep on a transatlantic flight must be an American politician running for office.  Our room is spacious by European standards.  This means you can stretch all the way out on your bed and not touch both walls, if you are four foot two.  Actually this room came with two drawers to put all your stuff in.  There is also a closet which is actually a two foot wide cabinet.  As promised they do have a computer in the room, if you count Apple as a computer.  I am writing this entry on the Mac and my only problem is the keyboard which has one of these keys (`) where a shift key should be.  We have a great shower and the bathroom is larger than the closet, er, cabinet.  Actually our entire room is larger than Sue's walk in closet that held her and a family of four during hurricane Andrew.  Sue did have to take out her Imilda Marcos shoe collection however.

Apple Computer in Room

We got up and began to venture out to see what our 4 months of planning would provide.  The first thing it provided was that we should have planned less and just said lets fly and see what happens.  You can never do all you think you can do and certainly not on a schedule.



We have learned one thing, the Brit's have a sense of humor.  Not the Benny Hill/Monty Python variety but the "we just love messing with your head" kind.  If you ask a Londoner for directions they will give one set of verbal instructions while giving a completely different set of instructions with gestures.  If they for instance say, "Go down this street and make a left after two blocks" they really mean you should proceed in the direction they are pointing for about 5 blocks and make a right.  You must pick all of this up with the force of the arm thrust to get the verbal 2 blocks to stretch into 5 and the slight bend of the wrist to the right while pointing.

They are among the friendliest folks you would ever want to meet.  Giving directions is their one small pleasure in life after paying the prices they charge for everything here.  Things only sound slightly overpriced until you figure that you still need to add over 50% to convert that figure into dollars.  That small £8 pound beer just cost you over $12 and weighs no where near eight pounds.

London is billed as a walking town.  Once you are in the town center, which is where our hotel is located, you can walk to a great many locations.  This is only partly true.  Street names change at random and certainly will change if they curve even slightly.  It seems like a Londoner helped out Google when they were mapping the area because Google seems to be in on the "let's mess with the Americans' heads" joke.  We Google mapped directions to our hop-on-hop-off bus location.  It involved about fourteen street names.  They had us walking down streets that were named but only existed for about 3 feet.  It seems any jog in the pavement of at least 1 meter warrants a new name.  When we finally found a Bobbie, all of the cops in London seem to have the same first name, he laughed at our dilemma and asked why we would follow our complex directions.  He indicated that all we had to do was walk out of our hotel and make a right (actually a left) and walk the mile and a half to one simple turn and we would be there.

Our Hop-on Hop-off Bus Stuck in Traffic

I misspoke when I said we found a Bobbie as he actually approached us.  It seems that all you need to do is pull out a map with a puzzled look on your face and a Bobbie will ask you if you are lost.  Sue and I have the puzzled look down to a science and hope we never lose the map.

We followed his new directions and arrived at Victoria Station.  Our hop-on-hop-off directions stated that we had to go to this station and visit their "office" across from platform 8.  We found platform 8 in Victoria Station but there were no offices to be found.  Eventually we were directed to their office as outside of Victoria Station, actually about 2 blocks away.  The "office" was not an office but merely a man on a sidewalk with a small computer/printer hanging on his waist.  He took our voucher and printed a ticket.  Since we had seen their tour busses stopping at this location we assumed this is what we needed to do.

When we waited for a while and no bus showed up we asked a lady that was nearby.  She said that we wouldn't be happy with these busses as they were all in foreign languages.  What we really needed was the yellow route where they spoke English.  Fine, where do we do this?  Just down there was the spoken direction but the very important hand direction was indicating that we needed to go down there and then down there and then we needed to go to this other place.

We were lost in London again.  We luckily had the bus map with all of the marked stops for the yellow line, the red line, the blue line, the pink line, the clothes line, the stop line and several others I am probably forgetting.  We approached another Bobbie who gave us directions which happened to be the direction he was going.  He walked ahead of us for half a block before he turned around and said that perhaps he had made an error.  He then sent us in the opposite directions where we finally found our pick up spot.

Bobbies Ready to Give Directions

This Bobbie probably had just received word on his radio that the Americans behind him were about ready to commit an act of violence and it was time to stop messing with their heads.  The joke was over.  They could do this because the entire town is covered with CCTV.  If you are outside in London you are being watched by at least 32 cameras at any one time.  This number of cameras watching your every move drops to only 4 if you are in the loo.

The one nice thing about all of this is that Sue and I are walking off all the fish and chips and beer we have been consuming.  Actually Sue doesn't drink beer but if you had been able to see my hand gestures while I was relating that last little tidbit of information would have known this.

Inside an English Pub

Well, we have in a day and a half, managed to walk 16.34 miles on our three 0.9 mile walks.  I'm tired just thinking about it.  More later, we have a full day tomorrow.