London Calling

I stifled the urge to yell "You're going the wrong way!" as the British Airways 747 took off from LAX -- over the Pacific Ocean. We quickly corrected course, however, swooping up and to the left, rejoining the continental US somewhere north of Malibu, angling up towards Fresno, and then across Nevada, Idaho, Canada, Greenland, and Iceland before landing at London Heathrow ten hours later.

I slept a good chunk of the way, so I've actually been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed here in London today - we landed at 10 a.m. and I had taken the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station and found my previously-booked hotel by noon. After stretching out on the bed for just a few minutes, I was back up and on my way.

The plan had been to go to Abbey Road to see (the outside of) where the Beatles recorded all their albums and then to Saville Row to see where they gave their impromptu final "concert" nearly 40 years ago, then on to the British Museum to see the treasures that have been plundered from throughout the world, but I did none of these things.

It was cold - with flurries of snow biting down on my cheeks as I walked around the Paddington area of London. I decided to take refuge in a tour bus and spent the afternoon touring the town from the top deck of a double-decker bus that runs a continuous circuit past all of redbrick London's greatest hits: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Kensington Gardens, Scotland Yard, London Bridge, and so on and so forth. From my frosty perch atop the bus (it was open-air, which would have been nice had it been more than 35 degrees outside), I enjoyed the sights - and took lots of pictures and video. I think I was most impressed, even though I am not really a theater buff at all, in the West End, because all of the playhouses and theaters looked like cool little models as we drove through the area's streets.

The only place I got off (you could get on and off the busses, which ran every few minutes, as often as you want, at any of 70 stops) was at Picadally Square, London's central shopping area. It's where Trafalgar Square and the Burberry store are. The rooftop from where the Beatles gave their last concert was there, too...I don't know if it was the right one or not, but I took pictures of a rooftop that *looked* like the right one, a rooftop that was being photographed by plenty of other people. It could have been it, or they could have all just been architecture buffs. Who knows?

It's nearly dark now, and I just got done eating dinner. I was going to take a taxi over to Abbey Road to grab a picture on the famous crosswalk, but I actually opted not to because of a) the encroaching darkness, and b) the Hoth-like cold, which became noticeably more intense after the sun went down. Oh, there's a part C, too: the money factor. I could have taken a subway to near Abbey Road Studios, but it still would have been a trudge through the cold, so I was going to take a taxi, but the waitress at the coffee shop where I ate bangers and mash for dinner guessed it would be at least ten pounds each way, and I've already been hemmorhaging money all day, so I decided not to go after all.

That'll give me something to see next time I come to London, and I will, because there are a million cool things to see here. This city seems to me to be second only to NYC in terms of attractions and whatnot. Provided that I save up some major bucks, I'd love to spend three or four days here one of these years. Considering the prices, I'll need to start saving now...

Heathrow Connect Ticket.............7 pounds (15 dollars)
very small hotel room..............65 pounds (140 dollars)
very cold bus tour.................22 pounds (45 dollars)
dinner at coffee shop-type place...17 pounds (35 dollars)

Up at 5 a.m. tomorrow in order to get out to Heathrow nice and early for my 9:30 a.m. flight to Bucharest, Romania, from whereabouts this journal shall continue at some point...

Ben