Tuesday November 5, 2002
Arriving at Heathrow, we managed to pass through customs with no fuss (and surprisingly no line either – its strange, our flight was full, yet there was a definite lack of crowds in the airports – possibly due to the odd timing of our flight). When we collected our luggage and Roger noticed that my bag had ripped around one of the seams. It looks like I might have to search for a new bag while we are here. We managed to lug our stuff down to the Tube Station and board our train into central London. The biggest fuss we had was when we discovered that the way out of Piccadilly Station was a bunch of stairs. Thankfully, our hotel was only a half a block from the exit.
After a couple of hours relaxing and showering, we set out to meet Kris at the Mau Mau bar on Portobello Road. It took a bit of transferring to get to the nearest Tube station since there is some construction on the Baker Street station. After some close calls, we managed to make it to the Ladbroke Grove station. The night we arrived was Guy Fawkes Night, a celebration of the anniversary when Guy and some friends tried to blow up Parliament in the 1600’s. So the people of London shoot off all sorts of fireworks all night long (and really they have been doing it all week). We managed to find the bar through the smoke and the non-stop fireworks barrage and awaited Kris. After only a five minutes or so, Kris showed up and we went inside. We had some drinks and spent a couple hours catching up. We made plans to try and meet up later in the week.
As we left, Kris pointed us to another Tube Station in Notting Hill that was actually a more direct route back to our hotel, and was only a ten minute walk. It was well worth the walk as we got to see the uber-swanky Notting Hill area and he was true to his word as the subway was much faster than the one we took to the bar.
After a long day we finally went back to the hotel and fell fast asleep. We didn’t get to sleep in too late as we booked a full day tour of London tomorrow. The concierge at my hotel talked me out of doing the day trip to Edinburgh. I was kinda iffy on it to begin with since it was very expensive, and I realized it would be a better day to explore London since Saturday is the Lord Mayor’s parade and fireworks show.
