Day trip to London

---

We landed at Heathrow airport around 2pm after a brief flight from Lisbon. I was pretty nervous about re-entering the UK after forfeiting our visa and I.D cards a few weeks earlier. All we had was our itinerary for the rest of our trip which should have been enough but you just never know which customs agent you might get and what kind o mood they might be in, especially at Heathrow. I made sure we had all of our customs cards filled out and passports to hand, way before we reached the counter just in case.

Finally, after lining up with the rest of the migrants we reached the customs desk. The woman wasn't as surly as I had first expected, she was reasonably polite asking few questions. I was seriously surprised at how easy it was to get through. I wish I had have come through as a tourist before instead of bothering with all of those visas.

We had a connecting flight with BA at about 10pm later that night so decided we would head into the city for a few hours. There were a few unfinished things that we needed to take care of in London, mostly to do with banks and picking up mail etc. I really wanted to head in so that I could gorge one more time on sushi from the japan centre. I was craving the stuff since leaving - too many pizzas will do that to you. Checking our bags into storage, we jumped on the tube, thinking it would take about an hour to hit Piccadilly - we severely underestimated this, taking more like 1 hr 45 minutes. We had to be back at Heathrow by about 7pm latest for check in and baggage check, so not entirely worthwhile but we were so close to the city we couldn't resist.

Jumping off the tube at Piccadilly I went to grab the sushi, Blake stayed on until Covent Garden as we had worries that we may have needed Visas for Brazil - a little too late if we did. Our flight was to stop in Sao Paolo but we weren't sure how long for, if we were to get off the flight we would need our yellow fever cards as well as a visa each, something that you cant buy upon arrival - we were screwed in other words. Whilst Blake checked with STA went to rant at my bank for not delivering my bank card on time, seems to be a general consensus on this trip, if I never speak to a bank again I will be a happy lady. We were suppose to meet each other at the dog and duck pub in Soho for a quick pint with some friends. Blake was late due to trying to sort out the situation with the Brazilian visas. Luckily we didn't need any as we were not getting off the plane only stopping for an hour in Sao Paolo. Phew. No one said anything about Argentinian visas though, more on that in the next blog.

That done, we downed a pint and ran for the tube again. Before heading down to the underground we realised that we hadn't ever actually taken any tourist snap shots in front of the Sanyo signs at Piccadilly or in a red phone booth! We were there so took 2 snaps each other looking disheveled and a little wired in a phone booth and in front of the signs and then ran for the tube.

Of course there were tube works....The pressure was on but was out of our hands so we had to just stand on the sweaty tube and hope that we made it in time. Of course we made it with plenty of time. Our whirlwind adventure into the city did nothing but stress us out and make us miss the place. The Sushi was well worth it though!

Next Blog: 'The good air' Buenos Aires

---

Photos

Phone booth!!
Probably the worst 4 photos of the trip....

Comments

[Han]

Fantastic photos, who would ever have thought you'd spent 3 years living here! xx