London Day 7
(This is a part of a 7-day series about my trip to London.)
Date: February 17, 2008
My last day in London started pretty early because I'd gone to bed very early the night before (I think around 8pm). I woke up around 5 or 6 and couldn't fall back asleep, so I watched movies in bed (with headphones, of course).
Something weird happened around 6:30, which actually happened the day before, too. At 6:30am - A.M. - one of our roommates, an older woman got up, and opened up all the windows. Opened them up by physically opening them to let the cold - COLD - freaking air in, and opened them up to allow sunshine to shine into the room. WTF! This was incredibly inconsiderate -- especially given that the rest of the people were still sleeping (and clearly intended to continue sleeping), and that she'd never asked anyone. >.< I was quite put off by the act, and it also clearly woke several of my other roommates up, but we were all too tired/lazy to do anything about it. So, another inconsiderate act goes unpunished and uncorrected. Lame. The funny thing is that I bet she thought she was helping us out by helping to wake our lazy butts up. What a load.
After checking out, I set onto the streets of London for the last time. I wandered through shops for most of the morning, ending up at the National Gallery again. After a while, I began to get hungry, and happened by a kebab shop right around that time. To this point, I'd thought that while a kebab might be nice, I wasn't going to be too impressed by a shish-kebab (meat on stick), since the food in London (in general) hadn't been too good. HOLY SMOKERS was I wrong. The kebab, it turns out, was more of what we call a shawarma, or a donair (not really sure what the distinction is exactly), and was amazing. Kind of a curry sort of a flavour, and undeniably awesome. Being lamb, too, also helped. ;-)
The trip to the airport was pretty interesting. The tube was partially broken/in service that day, so I needed to take a detour. The detour involved heading to a weird random station, and then taking the high speed train to the airport. I was pretty excited about this until I saw that the signage leading from the trains to the actual terminals were not nearly as good as the signage from the tube. Basically, the signs in the underground subway give you hints about which Heathrow Terminal you should go to based on your airline and destination. No such signs existed at the train station. So there I was, trying to decide whether to stay on the train to go to Terminal 4 (let's say), or to get off and try to get to Terminals 1-3. I decided to go with the latter since that would give me a 75% chance of getting it right (of course, I didn't print out my e-ticket since the Internet cafe didn't have a printer, and I didn't think to copy it down -- stupid me). As I'm walking, the train zips off, and then I see there's another decision point: Terminal 1 is left, Terminal 2 is right. What happened to Terminal 3?! Uh-oh. I turned left (Terminal 1), since that sounded like a good choice, and one that I would direct loser tourists to. After a 15 minute walk (during which time the only thing I could think was, "Do I have enough time to walk the other way to go to the other terminals if necessary?"), it turned out I'd guessed right. Hallelujah!
Things did not look good when I got onto the plane and tried to get to my (aisle) seat. To make a long story short, the fellow that I had to interact with was an elderly man who didn't speak much English, but did a good job of taking up a lot of room in the middle seat, and convinced the both of us that we'd have to sit next to each other through the entire trip. At take-off, it finally became clear that he was supposed to be at the window seat, but preferred to be close to the aisle for bathroom access. I acquiesced, and traded seats. This turned out to be my downfall, not because it limited my access to my hand luggage and the bathroom (though that was an unfortunate inconvenience), but because he ended up getting my lactose-free meals! The first time the flight attendant came with the lactose-free meal, he of course put it in front of the old man asking, "Special meal?" To which the man responded (of course), "Yes, food!" Being the quiet guy I am, I didn't raise a fuss. This turned out to be my undoing as my lactose-containing meal ended up making me extremely gassy for the rest of the trip, and later got me sick (though fortunately I was home by then). Moral of the story: try to be born with a large bladder and not have a lactose allergy.
The last great story of my trip was the events surrounding customs. Somehow, Customs Canada apparently gets no notice of when flights get in to Vancouver. Somehow, YVR doesn't communicate that -- even when seven international flights arrive at YVR at the same time. This ended up as a 2hr wait for Customs at YVR. It didn't help to see people cutting into the line at random places. "Welcome back home," indeed.
Date: February 17, 2008
My last day in London started pretty early because I'd gone to bed very early the night before (I think around 8pm). I woke up around 5 or 6 and couldn't fall back asleep, so I watched movies in bed (with headphones, of course).
Something weird happened around 6:30, which actually happened the day before, too. At 6:30am - A.M. - one of our roommates, an older woman got up, and opened up all the windows. Opened them up by physically opening them to let the cold - COLD - freaking air in, and opened them up to allow sunshine to shine into the room. WTF! This was incredibly inconsiderate -- especially given that the rest of the people were still sleeping (and clearly intended to continue sleeping), and that she'd never asked anyone. >.< I was quite put off by the act, and it also clearly woke several of my other roommates up, but we were all too tired/lazy to do anything about it. So, another inconsiderate act goes unpunished and uncorrected. Lame. The funny thing is that I bet she thought she was helping us out by helping to wake our lazy butts up. What a load.
After checking out, I set onto the streets of London for the last time. I wandered through shops for most of the morning, ending up at the National Gallery again. After a while, I began to get hungry, and happened by a kebab shop right around that time. To this point, I'd thought that while a kebab might be nice, I wasn't going to be too impressed by a shish-kebab (meat on stick), since the food in London (in general) hadn't been too good. HOLY SMOKERS was I wrong. The kebab, it turns out, was more of what we call a shawarma, or a donair (not really sure what the distinction is exactly), and was amazing. Kind of a curry sort of a flavour, and undeniably awesome. Being lamb, too, also helped. ;-)
The trip to the airport was pretty interesting. The tube was partially broken/in service that day, so I needed to take a detour. The detour involved heading to a weird random station, and then taking the high speed train to the airport. I was pretty excited about this until I saw that the signage leading from the trains to the actual terminals were not nearly as good as the signage from the tube. Basically, the signs in the underground subway give you hints about which Heathrow Terminal you should go to based on your airline and destination. No such signs existed at the train station. So there I was, trying to decide whether to stay on the train to go to Terminal 4 (let's say), or to get off and try to get to Terminals 1-3. I decided to go with the latter since that would give me a 75% chance of getting it right (of course, I didn't print out my e-ticket since the Internet cafe didn't have a printer, and I didn't think to copy it down -- stupid me). As I'm walking, the train zips off, and then I see there's another decision point: Terminal 1 is left, Terminal 2 is right. What happened to Terminal 3?! Uh-oh. I turned left (Terminal 1), since that sounded like a good choice, and one that I would direct loser tourists to. After a 15 minute walk (during which time the only thing I could think was, "Do I have enough time to walk the other way to go to the other terminals if necessary?"), it turned out I'd guessed right. Hallelujah!
Things did not look good when I got onto the plane and tried to get to my (aisle) seat. To make a long story short, the fellow that I had to interact with was an elderly man who didn't speak much English, but did a good job of taking up a lot of room in the middle seat, and convinced the both of us that we'd have to sit next to each other through the entire trip. At take-off, it finally became clear that he was supposed to be at the window seat, but preferred to be close to the aisle for bathroom access. I acquiesced, and traded seats. This turned out to be my downfall, not because it limited my access to my hand luggage and the bathroom (though that was an unfortunate inconvenience), but because he ended up getting my lactose-free meals! The first time the flight attendant came with the lactose-free meal, he of course put it in front of the old man asking, "Special meal?" To which the man responded (of course), "Yes, food!" Being the quiet guy I am, I didn't raise a fuss. This turned out to be my undoing as my lactose-containing meal ended up making me extremely gassy for the rest of the trip, and later got me sick (though fortunately I was home by then). Moral of the story: try to be born with a large bladder and not have a lactose allergy.
The last great story of my trip was the events surrounding customs. Somehow, Customs Canada apparently gets no notice of when flights get in to Vancouver. Somehow, YVR doesn't communicate that -- even when seven international flights arrive at YVR at the same time. This ended up as a 2hr wait for Customs at YVR. It didn't help to see people cutting into the line at random places. "Welcome back home," indeed.
posted by tangaroo at 6:46 p.m.
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