Day 0 - Getting to London

Distance Walked: A Lot, Time Taken: Too Long, # Beers: None but 2 Campari & soda, 1 Bellini, 1 glass of red wine

After stressing out about the amount of things I needed to do before going on holiday, I ended up getting to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  What a surprise.  I passed some of the time buying a book of crossword puzzles as well as chocolate coated coffee beans and ginger teddy bears from Australian companies to make a uniquely Australian trail mix.  I then spent some time wondering why I hadn't bought all this before in regular shops, instead of paying inflated airport prices.

On the Melbourne to Singapore leg, there was a couple in the row ahead of me who were on a holiday to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.  The wife was delighted to discover they were offered champagne as a pre-flight drink, and then again as a post-take off drink and then during and after dinner.  I wonder if she will be just as delighted when she has to deal with both jet lag and a hangover.  When we were getting off the plane in Singapore the husband kept poking her playfully in the ribs.  He knew just how many times he could get away with doing that before she lost her temper and playfully clobbered him.  He stopped perhaps one poke from the limit.  They clearly have been married for a long time.

There was a moderate amount of turbulence on both my flights.  Normally, nothing to worry about but Singapore Airlines were, understandably, playing it very safe.  They turned the seat belt sign on at the slightest sign of a bump.  They rarely stopped meal services though.  I ate when food was offered and drank when drink was offered.  About 4 hours before reaching London my poor, overstuffed stomach rebelled.  Not a pleasant experience at the best of times and on a plane is not the best of times.  On the bright side, once it was over I immediately felt much better so it wasn't a dose of food poisoning or another illness it was just greed.

As a public service announcement I would just like to say do not decide that 1 hour before landing is the right time to lock yourself in airline toilet to clean your teeth, shave, fix your hair and change out of your pyjamas (all the one person).  When I am the imperial overlord such people will be taken out and shot!

I eventually made it to my hotel, the Harlingford, around 11am even though we landed at Heathrow at 8am.  That makes it 32 hours door to door.  I have a superior single room here at the Harlingford.  It is a suprerior room as the bed (a double) is big enough for 2, even though the room is not.  Also, it is in the basement, where the superior servants would have had their rooms.  (A picture from my window is below.)  The regular servants would have been up many flights of stairs in the attic.  This hotel does not have lifts.  They take great pains to point out that they don't have them and, under heritage protection rules, they aren't permitted to add them.  There is a pop-up to this effect on every single webpage on their site.  They've obviously had complaints from people for not making this clear.

I got to the hotel too early to check in, but was able to leave my suitcase behind, which was handy.  I then headed off to Stanfords to buy maps of the hike (I love maps) before wandering around Covent Garden for a bit.  I decided to have lunch at Rosa's Thai near Seven Dials.  I had Pad Kra Prow (minced chicken with chili and Thai basil) which is something I would regularly have at home, so it was almost comfort food.  Under my rating scheme it should rate Harmless, but as it had the right amount of chili rather than the white amount, that doesn't seem to the correct label.   It shocked my stomach into submission and I felt back to normal after it.

There was a group of people, either coworkers or fellow students, having lunch there at the same time as me.  They got onto the subject of weddings somehow.  A Hindu woman from Sri Lanka explained that she ended up marrying (the same person) three times.  Once was the full-on Hindu ceremony back in Sri Lanka, the 2nd wedding was in a Catholic church in the UK and then the 3rd was a civil service to make it all legal.  Each wedding was months apart so they now have the fun job of trying to work out which date to use as their wedding anniversary.  A Cypriot coworker topped this story.  Apparently, in Cyprus the done thing is to invite your entire village, along with every one of your relatives to your wedding.  His village is relatively large, so he had 2,800 people at his wedding. 

After lunch it was finally late enough that I could check in so I headed back to the hotel.  I was also finally able to take a shower, which I'm sure people around me appreciated.  Just before I left on my holiday I had my hair colour touched up to be a lovely vibrant purple -- which leaves lovely vibrant purple stains on white towels.  Oops.

I had planned to spend the afternoon at the British Museum but couldn't face the thought of the 20 minute walk there and decided to head to the British Library instead, as it is just up the end of the road from the hotel.  Unfortunately, their special exhibition of books on travel along the Silk Road has just closed and their special exhibition of Medieval Woman in Their Own Words had yet to open.  Also, their regular exhibition of special items from their collection was closed too for renovations.  I was forced to browse in their shop intead.  They have put out a series of classic British crime novels from their collection and were having a get 2 for the price of 3 sale.  My suitcase only weighed 11kg.  A few paperbacks aren't going to do any harm.

I then decided to visit the Wellcome Collection museum on medicine and human health as it was just down the road.  Sadly it is closed on Mondays.  I had to settle for a chat with the guard (he was impressed I got my hair to match the colour of my jumper) and a browse in their shop.  I managed to resist buying a very much larger than lifesized plushie germ.  I finally ended up just wandering around the Bloomsbury area on the theory that if I was upright and moving then I couldn't fall asleep.  I got my culture from reading all the blue plaques telling me about the famous people I'd never heard of who had lived in various houses around the place.

I had a dinner at a ridiculously early hour.  One advantage of London being so full of tourists is that many restaurants are happy to feed you dinner at just about any hour of the day or night.  I had a pizza at Franco Manca.  It should have rated as You Can Eat It as the sourdough base was excellent.  Sadly, the selection of toppings was rather boring.  I had ricotta, mushrooms and ham, which turned out to be a white pizza (i.e. no tomato sauce base) which was a mistake.  Just Harmless in the end. 

I'm now back at the hotel.  I will stay awake until 9pm.  I will.  Just you see.