Friday, January 11, 2013

~7 hours in London? No problem! - Part 1

My first rotation home was absolutely awesome and totally not what I expected all at the same time. It was destined to be awesome no matter what simply because I was coming home for Christmas & New Year and the plan was to spend time with family and friends and try to sneak some snowboarding in. The reality involve a bunch of dentist trips and a whole lot less free time than I thought I'd have meaning I didn't get to see everyone that I was hoping to see. To those of you I missed seeing - I'm quite sorry!

The worst part about any rotation is the day that it ends. Some quick goodbyes, some running around, and a trip to the airport meant I was on my way back to Madagascar. 15lbs heavier... yes, I had accomplished my goal and succeeded in eating Christmas.

All trips out of EIA start out with a brief stop in the Air Canada lounge to see if they have any of the awesome beers they used to carry.. Once again disappointed in the budgetary cuts resulting in us freeloading lounge folk not being able to have a Boddington's preflight I settled for some hummus and chips and some sort of terrible concoction they call "water".

The flight to London was blissfully uneventful, unless you count the fellow a row ahead of me who snored loud enough to defeat the jet noise, noise cancelling headphones, and music - it was sort of like being at home again. Air Canada did it's usual best to stuff me full of moderately less terrible food than you get in economy and we arrived in London mostly on schedule.

Due to the way the flights work out on the way to Madagascar it's pretty common to have an fairly lengthy layover regardless of the city you hop through. As a result I was left with just shy of 7 hours in London. Thanks to the fact that South African Airways and Air Canada no longer have a baggage sharing agreement I already had to enter London to pick up my bags so I figured a quick hop into town on the Heathrow Express was probably a good idea.

Bags obtained (woohoo), stored (oh god they want how much?), and Heathrow Express ticket (SEVENTY DOLLARS? ITS A 15 MINUTE TRAIN RIDE!) purchased I was off to Paddington station.

I was immediately disappointed in the lack of bears.
From Paddington you hop on the tube - seriously I'm not trying to be Eurotrash here, it is ubiquitously referred to in signage / etc as the tube/London Underground - and like a good tourist head immediately for Picadilly Circus. Up, up, up you go and you pop out to a view that looks something similar to this.

If only all buildings in Edmonton looked like this...
Picadilly is within walking distance of all kinds of touristy stuff and at one end of the theatre and shopping districts. I did some walking around the theatre district as I had never walked through there before.

This is a run of the mill "mall" in the area. Why can't our stripmalls look this awesome?

A beatles show?!?! Sign me up!!! .. No matinees :(


Because after my Christmas binge I needed to get fatter.
All pubs at home should look at least this awesome before being allowed to open.
At that point I realized the direction I was heading was away from all of the other awesome touristy stuff so I popped down a side alley along a Casino and headed towards the Thames.

Here is a blurry photo I accidentally took of my feet.
Theatre square on the way back complete with Christmas decorations and no less than 5 movie theatres. 
 
I stumbled upon the Lotus store. It was totally awesome and even had one of their 2010 chassis hanging from the roof. Unfortunately prices started on everything at a cool 25 year mortgage. The interest rates were terrible to boot.
A wild coach store appears!
Another view of Picadilly Circus crossing.
Once back at Picadilly I headed towards St. James park down a road whose name I cannot remember. It was lined with totally awesome buildings though. I don't think I'll ever tire of the architecture in London.

Building under reno - but check out the entryway. Totally awesome.
You're not a tourist without a photo of a double decker bus.
And a phone booth (Tardis)
And an Obelisk complete with some random guy on it. Said guy turned out to be Frederick Duke of York. He's been dead for a long time. At least he has a cool obelisk thing.
Just past the deadguyelisk is a street you have to cross to get to St. James. The day was totally not stereotypically British dreary... it didn't rain.
Which brings us to St. James park. Just in time to miss the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace.
Finally after walking for what seemed like forever (~1KM) I'd made it to St. James park.

And this is where I run out of motivation for today's blog post. :) Stay tuned for a fresh edition sometime later.

1 comment:

  1. Matt, the bus from Heathrow to Waterloo station is fast and cheap, try it next time.

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