London Report

So the wireless internet scheme has not quite gone according to plan. In San Francisco, we are blessed with wireless internet hotspots everywhere. They’re a bit harder to come by over here. Still, I am undaunted and will post as much as possible.

The O man and I flew over on Monday on British Airways. I was very impressed. I don’t think the flight attendants were any better than the ones at United, but the food service was definitely a notch above United food and we all got a lovely pouch with socks, eye shades, and a travel toothbrush and toothpaste in economy. We used to give out socks and such at United, but bankruptcy and such nixed all of those freebees. The entertainment system was really nice as well. 18 channels of video and audio plus the Airshow and games like solitaire and poker. BA is also in the midst of installing video and audio on demand, so they definitely have a leg up on American carriers. Lest I forget my boyfriend's favorite part of the flight, booze is still free too.

We arrived in London about 30 minutes early on the 19th. We took the tube to our hotel near the Queensway area and settled in. Our hotel was definitely on the cheaper end of the scale. One person could fit in the bathroom at a time. Barely. The pound is really high against the dollar, so everything was expensive. Still, we had a great great time. My boyfriend conked out immediately upon reaching the hotel. I got out to the store and picked up some food and drinks before returning the hotel. Even though I was fighting it, I too fell asleep. We both woke up at 2 AM wide awake. Grr… We watched a movie and then slept for a couple more hours before getting up early to hit the town. Our hotel had a lovely breakfast spread – fresh fruit, cereal, yoghurt, cheese, poached eggs, juice, coffee, tea. We ate and then headed out to be tourists. This is Oziel’s first trip to Europe, so it’s been a lot of fun showing him around. We started with Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament. We then walked across the Thames and bought tickets on the London Eye, the Ferrisferris wheel that was erected for the Millennium celebration. I have to say, it was one of the highlights of our time in London. We were blessed with gorgeous weather all of the days we were here and you could see a good 15-20 miles from the top. Here are some of the pictures we took.






It’s a really cool ride and you can barely even tell you’re moving. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting London. After this, we headed over to the Imperial War Museum. I was more interested than in this than the boy. He headed outside and met up with a lost Japanese guy. They opted to visit the local pub while I was a nerd in the museum. We met back at the hotel around 6 or 7. Oziel passed out again due to his jet lag and I managed to fight off sleep for a couple of hours.

Thursday was our last full day in London. We had breakfast and then headed out to the Tower of London. When I was flying to London, I was never able to do a lot of these things as I only had 24 hours here and 12 hours were usually spent sleeping. The Tower turned out to be a lot of fun and we had a fun tour from one of the Beefeaters that still staff the Tower. The Crown Jewels were impressive and the crowds were light, so we were able to take our time and enjoy them. After this, we wandered over to Tower Bridge and took some photos. (The last time I visited Tower Bridge, David Blaine was in the box and it was quite a spectacle.)

We returned to the hotel and I went for a run in Kensington Park. We then headed over to the Victoria Theatre and caught the show Wicked which has newly opened here in London. They’ve improved the staging a bit and the Tony winner Idina Menzel is reprising her role as Elphaba for the first 90 days of the run, so it was very cool to see her.

Friday morning, we did some last minute shopping and then headed to Heathrow for our flight to Zurich.

That's all for now guys. I'll blog more as our trip goes on.

Cuidate.