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Our flight across began on the 20th, but it was
the 21st before we arrived.
The flight over was not bad, but, by the time we'd crossed
the US and the Atlantic we'd been in the air almost as long as a trip across
the Pacific to Taiwan. So much for the idea of a "short-hop" across the
Atlantic. At least we had a brief stop in Philadelphia, where I had the chance
to have a simply awful pizza in the airport. The food on the plane was better,
but insufficient.
We flew over Ireland shortly after the sun came up. It was
an absolutely cloudless day. Ireland lay below us, quite literally looking like
the soft rolling hills had been covered with a green patchwork quilt -- a quilt
stitched together by someone with no sense of direction whatsoever. Each patch
of the quilt was another vibrant shade of green.
We arrived at London Gatwick airport around noon, almost an
hour early, so we sat on the runway for 30-40 minutes waiting to get a
gate.
Immigrations and Customs was very painless. Soon were on our
own in a foreign land. London Gatwick airport is, not suprisingly, nowhere near
London, and we had to catch the express train that goes to Victoria station. As
an immediate introduction to British trains, it wasn't bad, but it was another
30 minute "delay" before we began our adventures. The scenery on the express
wasn't too exciting, often it just travels along behind houses. We did get a
comprehensive overview of how the British hang their laundry out to dry.
Our introduction to the trains was followed immediately with
a tour of the Tube, London's underground railway. Our Bed & Breakfast for
the first few days was near Paddington Station, and so we had to continue our
railtravel. We had packed lightly, each with only one large carryon bag and a
napsack, but wrestling the luggage on and off planes and trains and getting
through turnstiles was wearing a little thin.
Our Bed & Breakfast was situated between Paddington
Station and Hyde Park, both being only a short distance away. I was given a key
with a "6" on it and we went up to our room. I opened the door and was
overwhelmed by a cloud of stale cigarette-laden air that rushed to escape. It
was so bad, I knew it would be intolerable. Then I spotted the shaving kit on
the sink, the slippers and luggage on the chair, the robe on the bed and the
sound of water coming from of the shower.
A quick trip to reception proved that we were, in fact, in
room "9" and that all those comedies you see about people getting the "6" and
"9" mixed up on the hotel key could be true. The only difference was, usually
in the movies the occupant is a beautiful, semi-naked woman who is on the run
from the Nazis and needs protection. In this case it was smoky, old fart in the
shower. (I later saw the gentleman leave his room, presumably none the wiser
for the experience.)
After disposing of our luggage in the room, we set out on
foot to Hyde Park and the adjacent Kensington Gardens. The weather couldn't
have been less like what is expected of London. The skies were cloudless and
blue and the temperatre was threatening to rise over 80. Chu-Wan, being
completely photophobic (out of fear that she might get a suntan) was using an
umbrella for our walk in the park. Meanwhile, the Londoners were stretched out
all over the park in droves trying to get a tan. She received many strange
looks from the natives. I suspect they thought she didn't know that umbrellas
are used when it is raining.
We wandered around the high street for a while and did some
shopping, then passed a Pizza Hut about the time we were getting hungry. Never
one to dismiss the possibility that passing a pizza restaurant when I'm hungry
might actually be a sign that a benevolent pizza god exists and is looking
after us, we stopped in.
If there is a pizza god, he wasn't having a stellar day. The
pizza was pretty standard Pizza Hut fare, in other words, "just OK". It was
also here that I began to formulate what I would later refer to as Glover's Law
of Pounds, or "G.L.O.P."
In short, the theory goes like this: If an item costs $X in
Phoenix, you add 10% to X, making it (1.1X) and call it pounds. That is:
£1.1X. The exchange rate was approximately $1.5 to every £1. This
makes the final conversion something like this: (£1.1X)*(1.5)=$1.65X.
My small pizza cost almost $17!!! GLOP in action.
Reeling from the cost of the pizza, and somewhat overcome
with jet lag, we decided all we could afford to do was stay in the hotel room
and sleep for the rest of the trip.
That plan didn't work, so I woke up sometime in the evening
and decided to watch some British television, well known as producing some of
the best quality television in the world.
After flipping through the channels (all 4 of them) a few
times I ended up watching an exciting BBC 1 program called Ground Force
which appears to be a program dedicated to following a team of crack
landscapers do a speed makeover of someone's garden. It almost managed to undo
all the good my afternoon nap did. |
