shanmonster | The British Invasion: Part I

I suppose it's time to start cataloguing my wild and wacky adventures in England, hm?

It all started when I took the bus to Toronto, and then the Go Train to Whitby (Ontario, not UK). I enjoy taking the train. It's a smooth ride, and I enjoy looking out at Lake Ontario. I can pretend I'm seeing the ocean. I miss the ocean a lot. Fortunately, I would soon be seeing it again, for the first time in half a decade!

[Lake Ontario]

After a night spent at

knightky's place and lots of worried goodbyes from his nephew and niece, we headed out to Pearson Airport. This was to be Kyle's first time flying, and I think he was a bit worried he would be a nervous wreck on the flight. He wasn't. He appears to love flying, although damn, those seats are not comfortable--especially not for big guys or long flights.

We took off in darkness, and somewhere a bit west of the British Isles, we met the sun.

[Clouds over the ocean]

Our in-flight meal was dreadful. We had some sort of dry, flavourless lentil dish (which I should not have eaten, since lentils give me issues at the best of times), and a stale bun. How bad was it? This was the only time I have ever seen Kyle spit out food.

We landed in Heathrow. I had a pernicious earworm: the Monty Python bit that goes "and I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow." Over and over again. After some confusion, we located our luggage and found our bleary ways to the right hotel shuttle. Our driver John was a bit of a character. He looked and sounded like a character from Fawlty Towers. He was friendly, affable, and dreadfully xenophobic. He seems to be ok with tourists, but woe betide England when it is being invaded by immigrants! He railed on about the Polish and the Japanese, mostly, while the passengers looked at one another in surprise. I'd been warned about some of the prejudices in the UK, but this was to be my introduction to it.

Yes, I was thrown off by seeing everyone driving on the "wrong" side of the road, but not as much as I was by how motorcycles and bicycles drive on the streets. They do not follow the same rules as cars, but weave every which way, or drive between lanes. Considering the narrowness of the lanes and how crowded the streets are, this was unnerving to me. I can't imagine cycling with the traffic in London. Yikes!

We arrived at our hotel around 11 am. We were utterly wiped. Our overnight flight had been too uncomfortable for us to get any sleep. Although I'd requested an early check-in, we were not in luck. Our room would not be ready until 3. Zombielike, we left our luggage with the bellhop, and zombie-lurched our way out into London, in search of breakfast. We found a breakfast place next to a sketchy-looking restaurant called Enough to Choke an Elephant. I don't remember the name, which is a shame, because I would like to warn you against it.

We ordered our breakfasts from surly waitstaff, then sagged down into our seats. The food was overpriced (a baked potato costs 8 pounds!) and unappetizing in appearance, but I didn't care. I was starving and exhausted. I ate my eggs. They were tolerable. I started eating the beans (bad idea! Beans, like lentils, are bad for me at the best of times), and paused.

Kyle looked at me. "What's wrong?"

"These taste ... weird."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Like they were mixed up with a tomato rolled in burning dirt."

I ate it anyway. Kyle took one bite of his, then pushed it aside. He said his sausage was even worse.

We finished our grim repast, then walked out into gorgeous, glorious weather. We were ideally situated, right next to the Thames and many of the iconic sites of London.

[The London Eye]

And some of the less iconic sights, too....

[Yikes]

When 3 rolled around, we made our way back to the hotel and crashed like narcoleptics for a few hours. Then we wandered a bit after dark. London is even more beautiful at night.

[Thames scene]

We couldn't stay up late, though. We were to meet the rest of our tour group early in the morning (around 2:00 am, by our home clocks). So off to bed we went, looking forward to the next day.

If you'd like to see all of the photos (annotated, at that!) from our arrival in London, you can view them here.

... to be continued.