London - Autumn 2008

I arrived here around noon, via San Fransisco and Denver. The flight went smooth with no luggage hickups and a roomy economy plus seat on both legs. After getting through customs and getting my luggage, which was done with in about 20 minutes, I took the Heathrow Express to Paddington station. That's a non-stop 15 minute ride (rather expensive 16 pounds). The hotel (Caring Hotel) is within an easy 10 minute walk from Paddington, and I got checked in there.

After sitting down for about 15 hours, I decided to take a walk to see if I could find the Temple Church (from the DaVinci code). That was a good two hour walk, that went through Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, and Strand. I had a tourist map, which only had a rough indication where it might be. After having wandered around for about an hour I gave up. I couldn't find the damn thing. It turned out that it wasn't open anyways.

I walked down Whitehall and got myself a pint of Ale. That felt good. I was pretty pooped after all that walking. The Red Lion Inn had something called a 'Sunday Roast' as their special for dinner. That sounded good to me, so I went upstairs and wolfed it down. The waitress was very sorry that she couldn't provide Yorkshire Pudding with the meal.

I took the Circle Line from Westminster back to Bayswater and am now back at the hotel (listening to Sarkozy saying something about drastic measures and unity).