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Published: August 7th 2007
Arrival! Sweet, sweet arrival...
Already the memories of cramping, screaming babies and the uncomfortable feeling in the ears of changing air pressure, are fading. Substituting for them instead are new experiences of a place 9 time zones away. So far my experiences of London include an unrelentless interrogation by passport control (question after question about how i expect myself to survive for 6 months with 25 quid cash, €4,400 in the bank and no idea of where i am going to stay), a very cramped one hour underground train ride from the airport, followed by another hour wandering around aimlessly looking for a nice cheap hostel mentioned in my -2007- edition lonely planet guide, only to eventually discover it had been closed for two years! Learnt lesson #1: Don't trust a guide that pretends to know everything.
I eventually made my way to another almost-as-cheap hostel which, to my delight, has internet, "free" (read "included") breakfast, free cooking facilities, an in built bar, pool room and a place to put my heavy backpack when i'm out during the day. Only problem is i can't check in till after lunch, so here i am killing time in the internet room.
Anyway my 40 pence is almost up and i'm keen to check out at least one museum before lunch.
Tomorrow i'm off to central London to catch up with my good friend Scott.
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Brendan McGill
non-member comment
Destination #1
Good to see you are still alive and breathing Ben. Already I had completely missed the fact you are in a really different timezone and when you told me it was 10:40 (when we were talking at 19:40 my time), it came as a shock to me. I didn't realise things like what you described from passport control would happen, that must not have been fun. Also that's some bad luck, who would have thought at recent guide could be such liars. Hope you have fun at the museum, I'll see ya later.