London Calling

After a good but a little bumpy flight we arrived in Heathrow Airport, England. We easily went through customs (although immigration was a bit too nosy about where we were headed next, for how long, and did we have visas yet?) and made our way to the underground station to get into Bayswater where Nigel's friend Nigel lives. The London underground system is great, it is clearly marked and easy to use. After about 40 minutes we reached the Notting Hlll Gate station and we emerged in London. It was pretty much how we pictured it and it did feel like London to us. It is strange to think that you can have an idea of how you will feel somewhere even if you haven't been there before.

At Nige's flat we took a shower and took a few moments to adjust to being in a house after being in hotels, dorms, guesthouses and tents for 6 months. Kel was most excited about being able to put her toothbrush under the tap, and not having to used bottled water. Even though we were tired we decided to take a bit of a walk in the nice weather (18C and sunny). First we stopped at Tesco to get our budget lunch of a huge baguette, tuna, potato salad and a tomato. Total cost of about 4 pounds (Thanks to Nickie and Alex for their tip). We walked 5 minutes to Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park, a huge park with a couple of lakes and playgrounds. We sat on a bench and made our lunch and watched the people for a while. It was interesting that we really hadn't heard any locals all morning, plenty of Aussies, Americans, Germans, French, and various other indistinguishable accents.

We had a peek at the back of Kensington Palace and then walked around the rest of the Park and over to Oxford street. After a bit of shopping (we needed socks) and our first warm English pint of beer (Kel didn't really enjoy it, but it was beer), we returned back to the flat.

Nige took us out to dinner with some friends to a fantastic Thai restaurant in Soho. It was actually almost 10:30 by the time we ate but it didn't feel that late, probably because the English summer sun doesn't set until about 9:30. On the way home we picked up a couple beers and sat and chatted late into the night before retiring after a long day.