Day 1 - London

Distance Walked: 18.4 km, G&Ts: 2 (Bombay Sapphire - Dull), Other Booze: 2  glasses red wine

I've made it to London.  And, more importantly, so did my suitcase!  Other than that, my journey was bascially uneventful, except that the flight from Singapore to London was "re-timed".  Note, for some reason, this is different to being delayed.  Although in this case we ended up taking off 30 minutes late and landing 1 hour behind schedule.

The flight was completely full, as so many people are headed to London for the Queen's funeral.  Not a spare seat in the place.  There was a very posh Englishman in the queue for Business Class.  He was explaining to his equally posh friend that he had to "slum it" in business class as there wasn't an available First Class seat on any airline.  Poor man.

I'm horribly out of practice with travelling.  It was midnight, Melbourne time, when we got to Singapore and all I could think of was how nice it would be to go home and go to sleep in my own bed.  I managed to get 7 hours of (fitful) sleep on the Singapore to London leg so I felt reasonably human by the time I finally got here.  My hotel room was ready early (I got here at 11am) so I was able to take a shower and put on clean clothes before heading out again which helped.  My hotel here is the Regency House Hotel and my room is the Captain's Cabin.  It's not nearly as big as this photo makes it seem but it is very cute.  I can easily imagine it is a cabin on a ship.

My first stop was to buy a local SIM card for my spare phone.  I have to confess I had an embarassingly difficult time doing this.  I asked the hotel concierge for advice and he told me there were plenty of places on Tottenham Court Road.  I wandered down the whole length of it without success and then pottered around Covent Garden getting more and more anxious.  I eventually wandered into one of those hole-in-the-wall places that sell mobile phone cases and other bits and bobs and asked for advice.  It turns out these days you buy a SIM card from them (or a supermarket or a newsagent) for 1 GBP and then add credit to your account online.  I'd been searching for a Vodafone shopfront!  In my defence, I was horribly jet-lagged.

For lunch I stopped at a random Italian place during my frustating search for a SIM card.  It was basically empty, so I was worried about what it would be like, but it felt like comfort food. The place I chose was called Dalla Terra.  I had the proscuitto & melon to start and then spaghetti carbonara for main and then a double espresso for dessert.  It turns out it was a fairly upmarket place, so the portions were elegant (i.e. small) but the taste was delicious.  It definitely gets a Not Bad rating.

Since I'm in England, I'm rating all my meals on a suitably English scale.  From worst to best they ratings are

• Not Very Good
• Dull
• Harmless
• You Can Eat It
• Not Bad

I'm also keeping track of the number of gin & tonics (G&Ts) I drink and the gin used.  Apparently, distilling gin is a big thing in Yorkshire these days.  There are 45 different distilleries there so I'll have to sample at least some of them.

There rest of my day was spent wandering around, doing random shopping.  The SIM card as well as some maps & guide books and batteries for my GPS.  The company organising one of my hikes mailed me the map & guidebook 6 weeks ago to my home in Carlton.  However, it still hadn't shown up by the time I left.  They've promised to mail new copies to the first hotel on my hike but I thought it best to buy my own here in London, just in case the replacements go missing/are delayed too.  There is a lovely map shop here which I'd been to before, but it had moved and I practically needed a map & guide book to find its new location!  A very frustating shopping day all round.

London feels very strange.  There are the usual amount of people around but hardly any cars and the ones you do see are usually taxis.  I'm not sure if that is because it is the weekend, or because congestion charges/general traffic make driving a car in central London just too unpleasant, or because of road closures due to the Queen's funeral.  I didn't go anywhere near where she is lying in state.  Apparently the queue to see her is 7 hours long!

I went out for a ludicrously early dinner as the caffeine hit from lunch was wearing off fast.  I went to In Parma which I'd been to before and really liked.  Either my memory was playing me false or it has gone downhill as the food just got a You Can Eat It rating - except for the tiramisu which was as good as mine.  Now I'm back in my room, desperately trying to stay awake until at least 9pm.