Yes, I Made it Home

November 19, 2014

I got up early and asked for directions to Paddington station at the front desk. I knew it was a mistake to ask anything at the front desk, but I also had a map and was pretty sure I could get to my destination regardless of what the front desk people told me.

I checked out of the hotel and decided that I would walk to Paddington and not take the closer subway stop to get there. It was really pretty close and it was not a bad walk. I also wasn't alone in making this walk. There were a fair number of other people pushing luggage to the station.

The station was huge! Unfortunately, though, you had to walk past where all of the smokers seemed to congregate to actually get inside. I found my platform and the train I needed was about three minutes away from departing. I couldn't find my ticket quickly, but the man working there said he thought he saw it while I was flipping through papers and not to worry that I would have time on the train to find it before they came asking for either a ticket or payment.

I got on the train - again having booked first class passage, and found my ticket. The car was nearly empty, despite the small difference in price from coach to first class. The ride wasn't too long and then I was at the airport. Heathrow this time.

Now, if you have been to an airport in the US you know what a disaster they can be. Heathrow was amazing! All of the waiting areas are together near the shops and you don't head to your gate until just a few minutes before boarding time. And the gates all had lots of room for people to sit - not like some other places.

I got on my plane, and this time it wasn't a full flight. The only bad thing was that I didn't want to miss my special vegetarian meals so I didn't relocate. Some people had entire rows to themselves and were able to spread out and sleep for most of the flight. I'm not a good airplane sleeper, so I again spent the whole trip watching films and TV shows. I don't even remember what I watched!

When I finally landed at LAX I had to wait over an hour for my car service to decide it was ready to make the drive to Tujunga. They also loaded up with people going downtown. The last stop downtown was for someone who was visiting to do some work with the LA Opera. She didn't know where she was going and despite giving the address to the driver ten times, he kept trying to go to a different address. There had been as mistake in booking and the wrong address was pre-programmed into his GPS or something.

It took me about 5 hours from landing to get home. At home, Oskar was the happiest I've ever seen a cat. No cold shoulder for my return. Instead he followed me around as if saying, "Never leave me again!"

Cut to weeks later: I hooked up the Spanish cell and downloaded the pictures I took with it, so here are a few odds and ends from the trip.

The view from the beach at the Dali house.

A beach on the Thames - why English people don't sit out a lot.

A business in Nice, owned by my family??

Spanish iced tea.

A tile in Parc Guelle.

My Spanish room service meal.

A sign in the Tate near the elevators.

A sign on the river near the Tate Modern, just a few feet from very active buskers.

Another Paddington.

The London Eye.

I don’t know when I'll be up for another vacation, but I almost certainly won't make it so jam-packed. 

Making the Best of It in London

November 17

Since the internet was weird at my hotel, I couldn't do as thorough a job of researching where I had to get for my tour in the morning. I had ridden the underground enough the day before, though, to have a general idea of how long I needed to get to the tour office. I asked the man working the front desk in the morning if he knew where the tour office was and how best I should get there. I told him I was planning on taking the underground, but "no, the bus is much better. It stops right in front of the hotel!" he assured me.

From a carousel near the river.

He told me to get on bus 148, show the driver where I was going on my map, and everything should be fine. I got on the bus and discovered that they only accept pre-paid tickets. The driver had already pulled away, so I was stuck on the bus at least to the next stop. The bus didn't go where the guy in the hotel thought, though. The driver, calling me "that lady," as in "that lady, where were you going again?" let me off a few blocks from where I needed to be with maybe two minutes to get to the tour. I kept hoping the tour bus was running late.

A public pay toilet near the London Eye.

I walked quickly in a light drizzle to the street I needed, but could not find the place marked on my map by the front desk man. I asked several people and it turns out, it is almost impossible to find someone in London who is from London and knows anything about the city. I even asked a man cleaning up trash bins, theoretically working for the city of London, who it turns out was from Africa. He told me to ask someone with a cigarette, which seems like very strange advice, indeed. I roamed around and around.

A kid giving money to a busker. The busker was excellent, by the way. 

I walked up the street in one direction until it was no longer the street I needed, passing Buckingham Palace and calling that my visit there for the trip. I turned around, after I was already 10 minutes late, and I went into a hotel and asked if they could call the tour office to find out if I had any hope of catching the bus. The tour office told the man in the hotel that I had 6 minutes to get to their last pick-up location. The hotel put me in a cab. After we're driving for a while, the cabbie asked me if I had a map he could look at. He didn't remember the address he was taking me to and he didn't really know the street anyway. We finally got there and he let me know…14£ later.

I'm reflected in there.

 I got to the tour office and, yes, I was by now very late - almost 40 minutes after when I was supposed to originally get the bus. I was crying. I had to sit down for 10 minutes and calm down before I could even explain to the man in the tour office what happened. He was able to cancel my full-day London tour for the next day and I book a Stonehenge 1/2 day tour, which doesn't go to Bath or anywhere else. It was discounted by 50% because I was so miserable about it. They would be picking me up one hotel over, so I only had myself to rely on getting me to the hotel in time.

I spent the day walking around the city trying to do the things I would have done on the full-day tour. I headed straight to the London Eye and while I was in line...it broke down. They got it fixed in about 1/2 an hour and I was able to ride it. 

Then I went to the Tower of London, where they were dismantling a memorial to fallen soldiers, where the moat around the tower had been filled with thousands of ceramic poppies. A sign said the poppies were for sale, but I asked in a shop and he said they sold out weeks ago - treating me like I was a little bit stupid for not realizing this. 

Is the Tower of London a popular wedding destination?

From there I went to lunch and had a veggie burger which was seemed to have been deep fried. I walked to St. Paul's - I don't know if you can go in, but other than the museums, I didn't go in any of these places. 

Paddington visits St. Paul's

From St. Paul's there is a walking bridge over the river to the Tate Modern. 

The walking bridge has many locks on it with love inscriptions on them.

All of the museums in England boast being free, but they have boxes inside asking for 4£. I paid it at the Tate Modern when I went in, only to discover that there were 14£ tickets needed for most of the exhibits. I looked at the few exhibits which were free and I really do think modern art is garbage.

It's just a piece of cloth on the ground!!!!

I walked along the river, back to the London Eye, stopping in a shop to get Richard Ayoade's book (Moss from the IT Crowd), and crossed over the river at Westminster Abbey. Again, I didn't go in. I continued down the river to the Tate (not modern) museum. It also had limited free exhibitions, but I enjoyed the one I saw which was a history of British art, set up by decades. I didn't give them any money, figuring they could get it from the Tate Modern where I wish I hadn't contributed.

The sun was nearly down, since it was nearly 5 PM, so I got on the underground and came back to the room for a rest. I feel like I'm giving Nice a run for its money here with walking. For dinner I popped down the road to a pub where I had a "jacket" potato with cheese in it. I also ordered water, but never got it. 6£ for just the potato, and that, it seems, would be the cheapest I could eat in London, short of fast food.

Cross your fingers that I see Stonehenge tomorrow.