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Published: November 11th 2009
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I tried making conversation with that young Asian lass but that didn’t seem to work. No idea why, but then again I remember what my older sister said to me just as I left her in Sydney…
“DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS”
…which is fair enough. I mean, who would want to talk to a guy who wants to run amok all through Europe and the UK, with the sole intention to try 80 different beers? Sounds creepy to me.
I thought about stopping and having a beer in Hong Kong but common sense got the better of me. After all, I’d have to wait a whole 24 hours before the next Virgin Atlantic flight to London if I would do something foolish and miss this plane. So I killed time with a computer that didn’t have a functioning keyboard. I had to get the mouse and click the onscreen keyboard and then the space bar on said keyboard didn’t work. International knobology!
The plane took off (with me on board) and we set west for London. I had to stay awake as long as I could to adjust my body clock to GMT because it was only
4.30pm over there. I did crosswords, filled up this journal, read Take 5, read That’s Life, looked at photos from Jess and Adam’s wedding, walked up and down the cabin…two hours into the flight, we were somewhere over China. Hello Phoebe, goodbye China.
I woke up when the guy sitting next to me had a peak out of the window and sunlight filled the cabin. Youch! Mind you if it was still 2am GMT, so I tried to get back to ZZZ.
When that didn’t work, I watched Lesbian Vampire Killers, since they didn’t really like sunlight either. I really enjoyed the movie, because I knew what to expect just by reading the title. I then got accustomed with the entertainment system that was now working. You could listen to a ton of albums - from Black Kids, Q Tip, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Blondie, Rokysopp and even a little bit of Beyonce.
Landing at Heathrow was as quick and painless as imaginable. I guess that’s what happens when your plane is the first to land at what is normally one of the busiest airports of the world. Immigration was easy when the official asked one simple
question then put a stamp on it and I loved the customs “inspection” - which was as simple as following a sign that said NOTHING TO DECLARE, leading out to the terminal waiting area.
At least my body clock was somewhat in order so I left my baggage behind at Paddington and decided to explore the city the best way possible - via The Tube. All I wanted to do was look for an internet café to tell everyone I was ok and to get my phone set to International Roaming. My Lonely Planet said there was an internet café at High St, Kensington but it was now an office to lease accommodation. After a brief walk up and down the street, there was not one to be found.
Next stop is Bond Street. Again, no internet café but when I looked at the store, another business owner had flyered up the empty shop window with the address of their own internet café, just around the corner. Excellent. This meant that I could truly set up international roaming, check up my internet banking balances, email and of course, Facebook.
The next thing for me to do was
keep on riding The Tube and work out how to get to St Paul’s Cathedral. For me, taking the Tube is going to let me see how well I know the city, when I get to set my bearings. It’s great studying a map, circling out things you want to see, but it’s a totally rad thing to be walking through the real topography and making that map in your mind.
I figured out where I was staying and then tried to picture myself hauling my luggage up the stairs of the St Paul’s tube station. Sure they have escalators but there are a few steps to negotiate at each station, to get from station to street level. A cab was definitely out of the question and to be honest, it wasn’t too far of a walk away from the Tube stop to the hostel. Neither was the London Museum, north of the Tube station. The place was undergoing renovations at the moment but still had some insightful exhibitions going back to The Great Fire of London, Apartheid and London before the present day. I went across to the Natural History Museum, telling the story of the history of
Earth from the Big Bang right up to present day. Some of the exhibits made me wonder if I had passed through a secret tunnel to the National Science Museum (next door). By the end of the museum I had seen enough and my feet were screaming out for rest, not to mention the feel of how long I had been sleep deprived.
I caught the Circle Line back to Paddington when I heard a woman screaming through the megaphone. She told us to get out of the station as quick as possible and in the other direction of where we were headed. This was hard as a) it’s peak hour and b) a lot of people use the Tube. So here I was, stuck in Paddington, with my luggage, trying to figure out how to get ‘home’. I should have a frigging sign stuck around my neck.
So therefore it was time for my first double decker bus ride. Nothing special because I wasn’t going to the top level with my 17kg of cargo. So I rode the bus and took in all the sights such as Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and St Paul’s Cathe-shit, that’s my
stop!!!
After a long deserved shower and change of clothes, I ventured down to The Rising Sun, the local pub about 50m down from the hostel. It was full of suits but Andrew Symonds’ twin brother was working behind the bar in a polo shirt and jeans. I was also amazed they had beers on tap branded Supercold, since Poms usually love warm beer. At least the Kronenebourg 1664 is easy to drink. Too easy. The jetlag made it feel like I consumed 1,664 beers and before long it was lights out at the very early time of 8.30pm.
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