London Day 2

David had to work Friday so I spent the day at the hotel working, relaxing and looking through the guidebook for cool things to do. Around 4:00 I left the hotel armed with handwritten directions to the Stroud office so that I could meet up with David and his colleagues and grab a beer at a pub. I have to admit that it feels very unsettling to walk around without a cell phone (and one with data!) now that it has become such an integral part of my life. Luckily I only had a short walk with a few turns and David and I met up quite easily. We spent a couple of hours chatting with his work friends at the pub, and then headed back to the hotel to find a place to go for dinner. After a bit of time looking online and at the guidebook we decided to just head out in the general direction of an area on the map that looked like it contained a high restaurant population. We weren't looking for any particular type of food and ended up at an Indian restaurant that was very busy and quite tasty.

  

On our walk home we stopped at a grocery store to buy some bread, cheese, fruit and salami for breakfast the following morning (we kept them on the balcony in our room so they would keep cool overnight). We also bought some Aero chocolate pudding, since we'd never had it (and everyone knows how much I love chocolate). Back at the hotel we spent some time looking through the guidebook to make a tentative plan for Saturday, and we continued a fight with the shower that had begun Thursday night. David and I have decided that bad showers seem to follow us around. This one produces lukewarm water that is warm enough so that you aren't in a bone-chilling shower, but not warm enough that you actually feel like it's a warm shower. We read the somewhat odd directions for the shower carefully, and decided that we were indeed using it correctly but that it just didn't get hot. 

 

The sink, and the tub, both had hot water. We ended up calling maintenance the following morning, which got us nowhere other than they offered to let us shower in another room, but were clear that the room would be used just for showering. Given how odd that sounded to us we decided to keep our lukewarm shower. We managed to improve the temperature slightly by either flushing the toilet multiple times throughout the shower (which really just got us laughing) or by turning the cold water on for the bath while showering. The latter worked pretty well, but meant that you had cold feet. 

London Day 1

I arrived in London on Thursday night - the flight over was actually pretty nice because there were many empty seats, which meant I got a whole 3-seat row to myself! Even though I had only slept 4 hours the night before I wasn't too tired on the flight so spent the time working a bit, watching TV episodes on my computer (my seat thankfully had an outlet!) and reading my book. The food was pretty gross, but I had packed myself a bunch of snacks and a sandwich. Going through customs was pretty easy, but as David mentioned I went for an extra long stroll in the Heathrow airport after incorrectly following signs for the "trains" instead of the "underground". I hopped off at Russell Square and decided I didn't feel like waiting in line for the "lift" out of the subway so started up the stairs. I did notice the sign that said "Emergency Stairs" or something, but I did NOT notice the sign that said "this staircase contains 175 stairs, use only in an emergency". After spiraling up what seemed like an endless staircase I met up with David at the exit having felt like I'd run a mile. I should probably mention that David and I have now climbed that staircase twice together to avoid lift lines... so the 175 stairs aren't seeming quite as bad anymore.

We checked into the Hotel Russell (located right around the corner from the tube stop) and dropped our stuff in the room and then went out to find some food.

Picture of Hotel Russell, taken Sunday morning

Staircase going down to the lobby from our room at Hotel Russell

Another photo of the staircase 

Given that it was 11pm at night we didn't find too many places within walking distance that were still serving dinner, and after deciding against Subway and Pizza Hut for obvious reasons we ended up at a small "French" restaurant called Denise's that had a very non-French serving staff but tasty enough food.  

Photo of Denise's from their website, we didn't bring our camera

Caroline Arrives in London

I was sent over the pond for a short two week stint to the UK, so Caroline decided to come and meet me in London for the weekend. She successfully navigated the tube (though she walked to the "trains" before realizing she wanted the "underground") and made it to where I was meeting her!

We haven't done a whole lot as I had work today and Caroline was pretty tired from her flight. We are in a swanky hotel that Stroud got a deal on. Our hotel was designed by the guy who designed the inside of the titanic! Hopefully we don't sink during the night.

Before London I was working in Hull, which is supposedly rated the 2nd worst place to live in the UK. It hasn't been too bad, and we have actually been staying at a 217 year old hotel. I think it might be showing its age though, as the place looks like it hasn't been updated since the 50s. We are staying somewhere else next week. However, It is pretty cool to walk out of the hotel every morning and see an old church directly in front of me! It reminds me how old England really is.