Visiting London

Visiting London was perhaps the grandest adventure I have so far undertaken.   I parked my car early on the morning of the 18th near Chicago O'Hare, took a bus to terminal 3.  Got myself carefully examined for explosives at the security checkpoint and with my passport in hand and a checked bag, I was given permission to leave the country for 8 days.  I chose to take a morning flight since I can never sleep very well on a plane.

I thought we were going to fly the great circle route, which would have taken us across the Atlantic and across northern Quebec, but in the event it was not quite that direct.  Instead we flew along in Southern Canada, across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the northern half of Newfoundland and across the ocean there. 

Hours later, in the extended twilight caused by our eastward progress, night fell some time before we ended up crossing Ireland, Wales, and finally landed in heavily urbanized London Heathrow.  Ireland was dark and mysterious, but as soon as we were approaching London there was a lot of orange glow emanating from the ground, glowing like fluorescent bacterial colonies or a network of orange and white neurons on a giant black canvas known as the UK.  

  Finally we could get close enough to the ground to see vehicles driving along the roads and motorways, and sure enough, they were driving on the left.

All airports pretty much look the same in the dark, as this video can attest.   After we got off the plane we walked what seemed like a mile up escalators and moving walkways to the UK border, which was an enormous room with multiple checkpoints and a huge maze of partitions to allow the orderly queueing of people waiting to go through customs. 

At the border they asked me "business or pleasure" and I said "pleasure" and they asked me what I did for a living and I said "sales".  I did not elaborate.   With that my passport booklet got its first stamp, which warned that I was not allowed to seek gainful employment or overstay the usual limit for a tourist, though with all the Romanians and other assorted persons allowed in, I don't see the harm if they added an American or two, as frankly most of my ancestors came from this place (or at least in the vicinity of Belfast, Glasgow, and Liverpool, even if it was around 250 years ago that they left.)   And Britain is a remarkably cosmopolitan place, almost like the US. 

Many of the white people I encountered there spoke French, as though the Norman invasion had just happened,  and all the shopkeepers were from India but seemed as British as anyone.   I may have even seen a few Mexicans over there too. 

I figured I didn't want to take a long tube trip all the way down to central London in the middle of the night, but it would have been okay actually.  Maybe the subway trains don't run all night, but they run pretty late, later than the airport buses anyway.  As it was, I caught the very last airport bus to my hotel,

for which I paid 4 pounds.  If I had been just a little later, I would have had to take a taxi.   I guess arriving in the morning is a better idea, although flying overnight is terrible for sleep, especially if the flight is full.  I don't know if I suffered jet lag or just sleep deprivation on my only other transatlantic flight, to Scotland in 1991, but the first day was a trifle hallucinatory, it seemed to me.  And they trusted Beth and me to drive one of their cars on the wrong side of the road, which was an adventure in itself.  The left driving was easy enough to get used to, but what really gave me fits were the roundabouts and how everyone in Scotland seemed to like to park their cars halfway on the pavement.  In London I saw much less of this, but then some of the streets were pretty narrow there too.   And you need to be damned careful crossing the street.  I saw people bicycling through London traffic and dodging those enormous wall-like double decker buses and thought to myself:  these people must have a death wish. 

I seemed to adjust to local time just fine.  I went to bed at midnight local time, and woke up the next morning and had breakfast at their luxurious buffet at the Holiday Inn, then I took the Picadilly line down to central London and emerged into the deliriously busy Oxford Circle, my first taste of London above ground. 

The streets in central London are well marked and I had brought good map of the city, and a compass with me to determine true North.  Using these I had no trouble finding the AYH hostel I was staying in, dorm style.  I had signed up for a bunk room sleeping 4.  It wasn't bad at all, however.  I didn't come to London to sleep anyway.  I can do that in Chicago. 

So this was my base for the next 7 days.   I had a London Pass and a travel card, and I was good to go anywhere in the London area for 6 days.   It proved quite valuable and used the tube to go everywhere.  The tube was entertaining in itself, and was the most extensive network of underground trains I have ever seen. 

  The use of advertising was more extensive than what I had seen even in Chicago.  Giant ads covered the far walls across from the platform.