Day 13 - Getting to London

Beer drunk: 0 pints, Wine: 2 glasses
Distance walked: unknown

Cousin Alex had offered to drive me to the airport this morning for my flight back to London.  It was at 10:20am and he thought picking me up at 9:15am would be fine.  I was a bit nervous about that but he swore it would only take 15 minutes to get to the airport, 30 minutes if traffic was particularly bad, so that would be plenty of time.  The notion of arriving some 35 minutes before a flight when you have luggage to check in didn't seem fine to me but since he was doing me a favour I could hardly insist he show up earlier.  As it turns out, I was puttering around at 8:15am only to get a phone call to say he was waiting for me in Reception.  He'd heard on the morning news that road works near the airport were causing significant delays so he decided we should leave as soon as possible.

We set off in his little white van, heading north and west down side roads and back streets, with Cousin Alex muttering to himself and dithering about which road to take. The van struggled to get up a particularly steep slope in first gear at one point.  I had visions of having to get out and push.  The brakes weren't too flash either but we never actually hit anything.  When we got to the western coast, we turned and headed south and east to approach the airport from the other side.  The whole trip took only 30 minutes but took several years off my life.  I spent most of my remaining 10 Guernsey pounds on a meagre breakfast at the airport.   A pity I couldn't have got a stiff drink but it wasn't opening hours yet.

The flight to London was unexceptional, as was the journey to my hotel, once I'd actually found the correct platform for the Gatwick Express train (it took me three goes).  My hotel here, Barry House Hotel, is the most expensive of all of the places I've stayed and my room is the smallest.  It is very convenient to Paddington and to central London so I'm not complaining.  The owner's name is Bobby by the way.  I don't know who Barry is.

It is a converted terrace house (as are all the properties on this street and the surrounding ones).  The layout is extremely odd. At the top of the stairs (I'm on the 2nd floor) there is a fire door that I have to push open.  This leads to a small space about the size of a staircase landing.  To the right is the door to a room and in front is another fire door.  Pushing this open leads to an even smaller "landing" - about half the size of the previous one.  Opening off this are two more rooms, one of which is mine. You have to sidle into this second landing and let the door shut behind you before you can get to the door of my room.  I'm sure all these fire doors would prevent the spread of fire.  However, I suspect they would also prevent the spread of guests out of the building in the event of one.

After checking in and getting settled, I headed out.  I stopped at the first place I came to for lunch as it was now 2pm and I was starving.  It was a greasy spoon and the food was as good as could be expected, i.e. not very. I then hopped on the Tube and went into the centre.  I wandered around Chinatown and the West End, studiously ignoring all the much nicer places I could have had lunch. Mary will adore the West End.  It is wall to wall theatres with almost too many shows to chose from. I bought myself a ticket to see Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap".  It has been showing continuously for 62 years, however I never seen it and don't know whodunnit.  I must be one of the few people who don't.  I'll check the reviews for some of the other plays that are on and perhaps see another one on Wednesday.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon doing some gentle shopping in Stanfords map shop and Foyles bookshop before wandering down Oxford Street.  Selfridges was a disappointment.  Just your bog standard department store.

After depositing my purchases and resting my feet for a bit I headed out for dinner near my hotel. Due to its proximity to Paddington (a 5 minute walk) there are dozens of places from cheap and nasty to more upmarket ones.  I settled randomly on an Italian place called Villa Rosa.  As I was going by the Italian waiter was having an intense discussion with 2 Italian tourists who elected to eat there.  It sounded like a good bet to me so I went in also.  Solo diners are not viewed with suspicion here in London so I had no trouble getting a table.

To start with I had tonno e fagioli (i.e. tuna and beans).  Someone had opened a can of tuna and another of beans and put some of both on a bed of mixed lettuce, spanish onion and cucumber.  I was given my own cruet with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar to dress it how I pleased.  It was basically how I would have made it at home so was a pleasing way to begin.  For main I had tagliatelle bolognese. The sauce wasn't as good as mine but was perfectly acceptable and the serving was huge.  Dessert was where it all went downhill.  I had tiramisu which was awful.  It was clearly commercially (and cheaply) made with some sort of artificial essence in place of the Marsala.  It tasted chemically and not very nice at all.