May 5: London at last

Sometimes first impressions are lasting ones, other times you have to look back over your first impression and revise you opinion of things. Such was the case when I stepped off the plane into pommyland. My initial response was to run to the nearest airline desk, buy another ticket and haul my arse back to HK. Immigration was very initimidating. Most places I've been to the border guards don't talk to you or at least minimally. Here it was like a brief interrogation, 'What are you doing here? where are you going to go?" things like that. Bink got stuck at the desk explaining how she'd screwed up a visa application as opposed to having one rejected as the border guard thought. An idiot Korean decided that he could start being touristy straight from the get go and whipped out his camera to take a few happy snaps at the airport..... in immigration, got himself yelled at by a fat brit lady. He had no idea what he was doing and had even less idea of what the fat woman was saying so the poor tour guide got yelled at too. Mighty fine start to a trip, wot.

The London underground was distinctly unappetising. It was a hell of a lot better than Sydney's poor excuse for a rail system, but it was a far cry from the incredible efficiency of Tokyo and Hong Kong's rail lines, not to mention the expense. The rail cars had manually opening vents as well as windows at the doors at each end of the car leading to the next car. These windows had a sign saying "Lower window for ventilation", which would have been fine except that meant exposing the entire car to the dust in the tunnel. I've been blowing fine grit out of my nose most evenings and early in the morning.



However getting out of the underground and onto the actual streets I felt a little better. It wasn't too unlike Sydney, just a whole lot more people. It was pleasant to walk through Mayfair and Soho. Lots of little boutique shops with exquisite products and lovely parks, not to mention the quaint houses. Got a brief guided tour of the area by our host, that was nice of him. The thing that struck me most was that it didn't smell too bad. So the first day was mostly doing the tourist thing, met up with Ingrid who just happened to be visiting Europe at the same time, 3 times in 2 years we've travelled with her now, but she's good value

Moving along, saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Green Park (original name huh), Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard at said palace. As a bit of an aside I had a pint of Foster's, that lovely beer that we aussies export for the pommies to enjoy because we don't want to drink it ourselves. Been a long time since I had one of those. Got busted at the Abbey taking surreptitious pics when I wasn't supposed to ^_^! , ah well.
Went and had a look a London Bridge, nice looking bridge but doesn't really compare to the old coathanger back home. Lunch/dinner (linner? dunch?) was at an italian chain restaurant along the river looking at the bridge, wasnt too bad. After the meal it was decided that we would walk to the very nearby London Waterloo a major station where Overground and Underground lines passed through. That's right they call them Overground trains here. Aaanyway, we managed to find the rail overpass and figured that it shouldn't be far away. Predictably we completely missed the station even though it was enormous and ended up at the rather unimportant station of Lambeth North whose only reason for existance was to link Waterloo and the ridiculously named Elephant and Castle station. Having reached Waterloo and realised our folly we walked back to the river and took a "flight" on the London Eye. Not too exciting bar the ridiculous picture taken by the London eye camera while we were looking in different directions, anywhere but at the camera, top stuff.

But anyway that capped off the first day