England Day 5

After 4 hours of sleep, I awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Small problem; it was 3:00 AM. I squished the pillow, I tossed and turned, I counted sheep and ex-girlfriends. Finally, with thoughts of a particularly boring and homely ex drifting around my head, I fell back asleep about 5:00. It was a good, deep sleep - until the alarm went off at 6:00. Bright-eye and bushy-tail was dead. But I managed a zombie walk into the shower and let the water bring me around.

Paddington Station

We made it to the station with a few minutes to spare and boarded the 7:01 train. We purchased a Family Pack, which allowed us to ride any train, subway, or bus all day. Cost 32.80 Pounds - about $52 in real money. After changing trains at Maidenhead, we made it to Paddington Station where we were to catch the tube that would stop at Buckingham Palace. It was then we discovered the Central Line, the one we needed, was "shut" all weekend for repair work. Fortunately, the wife figured out an alternative way and after several more rides, we emerged above ground at The Green Park.

After walking a short distance through the park, there it was, Buckingham Palace - and about 30,000 people! We walked up as close as we could get, but were stopped about 100 yards away and across a road with cars whizzing by. The road was now roped off to pedestrians so we found a little open spot "on the front row" and looked around. After a while when nothing was happening we thought we had missed the Changing of the Guard ceremony so we were about to leave, but first I brought out my Nikon 300MM lens and took a few photos. Then we heard someone say the ceremony was about to start and would come by right in front of us. The crowd was rather large behind us by then and we had to fight off one particularly determined Indian lady who tried to push her way into our spot. I couldn't believe this "lady." She stepped on my toes twice, kept bumping into me much firmer than if it was by accident and eventually pushed her arm in front of me and tried to force me to get behind her. Several times while she was doing all of this I tried to politely get her to stop by saying, "Excuse me" and "Ma'am, please stop." Nothing worked. I finally grabbed her by the shoulder, got in her face and forcefully told her to back off. She retreated and the next time I looked over she was gone.



Changing of the Guards ceremony at
Buckingham Palace

The ceremony itself turned out to be a bit anti-climatic. Guards on horses rode in, the band marched in, guys on foot marched in, the band marched out, guys on horses rode out, and men on foot marched out. End of ceremony. Glad we got to see it so we can say we did, but it didn't live up to the expectations in my mind.

After it was over, we saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, then headed toward the London Eye, a 443 foot Ferris wheel located on the banks of the River Thames. The wife had purchased tickets the night before so we wouldn't have to wait in line. Good thing as there were about 1,000 people waiting to buy tickets and only about 100 in the pre-purchased que. After getting to the counter, they didn't have a record of our purchase. I was having rather unkind thoughts as I contemplated standing in the ticket line which now had about 2,000 people in it, but the helpful clerk agreed to let us buy our tickets from him. We found out later the credit card the wife used had been frozen for fraud alert. Somebody in London was trying to use her credit card! A quick call to let them know it's us trying to use our card solved that problem.

Big Ben from ground level.

After an interesting 3-D show and waiting in another long line, we boarded the ride. Pretty darn cool ride. All of London was laid out in front of us. I didn't ask the wife how much it cost and still don't know, but it was probably worth it.

From there, it was a short walk to catch the boat for a River Thames cruise. I really enjoyed that also. The guide was informative and amusing as we passed by many landmarks and under numerous famous bridges.

Big Ben, London and River Thames from the
top of the London Eye.

By now it was long past lunch and the youngest daughter was allegedly about to die of hunger. As we walked the streets, what to our wandering eyes did appear? McDonalds! Since youngest daughter has single-handedly kept afloat McDonalds stock, there was no way we were getting around it. And to show how bland I found the food over there, that Big Mac was the best burger I had the whole time. Sad.

We hopped a double-decker bus and took a tour of London. It wasn't as good as the river cruise because it just had a rather bland, recorded spiel describing the famous sites, but we did manage to get upper, open-air seats and it was fun seeing buildings and places I had heard about over the years. We stopped at a couple of places to look around and then just hopped on the next bus since they come around about every 15 minutes. Nice.

Tower Bridge over the River Thames on a
very overcast day.

We hopped off the bus to visit the Tower of London and found that it's a 2 - 3 hour tour and was past the time they let anybody in. So we saved that for the next day and just walked around the outside walls. It was getting dark and we were tired from all of the walking and standing in queues so we headed to the subway for the trip back. Of course the map we had wasn't detailed to the individual street level so there were several false starts and standing around street intersections trying to figure out where the heck we were. During our little unintended walking tour, we came across the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Youngest daughter was very excited as she is a big fan. Unfortunately, it was closed. So was the official London Beetles Store across the street. More for tomorrow.

We finally made it back to Marlow on the 11:01 PM train and fell in bed about 12:15. Set the alarm for 6:00 again and looked forward to another day of adventure in London. And for the first time since arriving, I slept soundly and all the way through the night. Blissful.
 

England Day 3 & 4

My favorite statue - in downtown Marlow

Not a lot to say about days 3 and 4 as they were very much like day 2 - a lot of work. I would meet up with the client folks in the hotel for breakfast about 7:15 each morning. Always got the buffet because that was the cheapest thing - 10 Pounds; about $16.20. It certainly was not worth that much. I've had better food at inexpensive hotel's free breakfast. The coffee was served in little bitty white porcelain cups and was very bitter. I suppose it's an acquired taste, but even the UK folks said it wasn't very good. A bowl of corn flakes, several pecan rolls or those little fruit rolls, some fruit slices, and toast with little bottles of various jams. The toast was the best part of the meal. Several times the UK folks ordered off the menu - usually fried mushrooms or poached eggs (nothing else, just poached eggs) or kippers (herring or male salmon fish.) Ordering off the menu added another 5 - 7 Pounds. Almost $28 for that buffet and 2 poached eggs? Can you say ripoff?!

The best part of the morning was when we arrived at the office where there was the UK version of Starbucks in the lobby. We always got a big cup of good coffee to take into the meetings. If you take cream in your coffee like I do, it's called "a white." The two guys with me didn't take cream so each morning we ordered, "2 blacks and a white." And every afternoon about 3:00, "2 blacks and a white."

The client brought in lunch each day and it was the same rather tasteless little finger sandwiches with thick chips and very bland "hot" sauce. Friday was the 3rd day in a row we had those things and it was beginning to get old already.

Wrapped up each day about 6:30 or so. Went out with the client folks Thursday evening for supper. We found a Mexican café and, considering I'm from Texas and love Tex-Mex, it was surprisingly decent. Not real good, just better than expected. Still shocked at the prices. No chips and hot sauce, tap water to drink (with 2 ice cubes - they are really stingy with the ice!), and just a burrito plate cost almost 15 Pounds, close to $25. Much better food and more of it would be about $10 at home.

Friday, I told my guys they were on their own. Wife and youngest daughter were still out running around. Finally, some peace and quiet! Time for a much needed nap. I had just gotten my pillow squished right and settled in when the room phone rang. It was the wife's cousin calling to confirm their plans for next Monday. Laid back down, squished the pillow, got all snuggled in, and the wife called to tell me they were on their way back. Grrrr. Abandoned any hope of a nap, got on the computer and answered my backlog of emails.

At least by then I was pretty much acclimated to the time change so managed to get to bed and asleep about 11:00 (being totally worn out helped, I'm sure). Set the alarm for 6:00 AM so we could catch the early train into London and finally into dreamland I crashed.

England Day 2

After about 4 hours of fitful sleep, the wake up call roused me at 7:30, my body screaming that it was only 1:30. I stumbled into the shower and turned the water on full blast. It never got past luke-warm, but the hotel provided some great shampoo. Pulled the towel off the warmer rack, cold because I had yet to figure out how to turn it on. Eventually I made it down to meet my work companions in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. The American contingent looked as bad as I felt, but the UK folks from the Manchester office who were also staying in the same hotel appeared chipper and ready to get to work. Evidently not traveling out of your normal time zone makes things a lot better. I was just glad we had had the foresight to schedule the first day's meeting at 9:00 rather than 8:00 to give an extra hour to those of us who had just lost 6.

Four of us crammed into a car about the size of a VW Bug and one of the UK people drove us to the office. We were told the reason everyone has small cars with stick shift is not just because of the little roads, but also because gas here cost about $8 per gallon! We decided not to complain about our $2.50 per gallon prices back home. The office was only 15 minutes away, but the ride was sure interesting. Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road, but cars park in the street of the barely-big-enough-to-call-it-2-lane roads so we kept having to either wait for oncoming cars to get past or drive on the sidewalk. I tucked that fact in memory for when we walked around town.

The weather was a bit on the cool side, low 60's in the morning and low 70's for the high, which was a very welcome change from the 100+ we had been enduring back home.

We finally finished the first day of meetings at 6:30 and surprisingly, with the help of numerous cups of coffee, I only had to stand up and move around once during the day to stay awake. After getting back to the hotel, changing into jeans and grabbing my camera, wife, and youngest daughter, we met up with the two American guys on my team who had also made the trip and went walking around Marlow until we found an Italian restaurant that was crowded. Figuring that was a sign that it was good food, we entered and were seated by a very nice looking waitress. The food was decent, nothing to rave about, but we had a good time talking and just being excited about being in London. Wife and youngest daughter talked about what they had seen and done that day, which was interesting seeing as how the working stiffs had so far only seen the hotel, several miles of very, very crowded little bitty streets, and the few blocks we had walked getting to the restaurant.

We discovered that when it comes to eating, the Brits eat late and evidently linger over dinner. To us, the service, although friendly, was very slow. We also discovered they don't serve free water in a glass here. If you want water, you buy bottled mineral water. And you have to tell them whether you want "still" water or "sparkling" (carbonated) water. It doesn't come in plastic bottles; it's in heavy glass bottles. Food prices are about the same as in America.Our waitress seemed very surprised by our request to get seperate checks. She finally said she would have to ask the manager if they could do that. She returned later and said no, they can only give one ticket per table. Interesting.

After our enforced leisurely dinner, we made our way back tot he hotel, stopping along the way at an ATM machine to get pounds and pence. Not a very good exchange rate now, about $1.65 for 1 Pound.

Strange license plates - strange to us anyway.

Once back in our room, we set about figuring out how to make things work. I turned on the shower to see if the water would get hot, thinking the hotel just ran low on hot water in the morning when everyone was using it. Nope, still wouldn't get hotter than luke warm. I finally found a little button you have to push on the faucett to get it to turn further and was almost instantly rewarded with water hot enough to boil in! The toilets are a bit strange too. The tank is in the wall. I thought at first that it was just our fancy hotel, but found out during the day that no, all of them are like that. The flush handle is opposite from ours too; it's on the left side. It didn't seem to flush very well, just a gentle flush that took several times to flush poop. Finally figured out that one flush of the handle is for "number 1"and you rapidly turn the handle twice for a full-force flush to handle "number 2." That's a pretty neat way to save water. We finally found a little light switch on the wall outside the bathroom which turned on the towel heating rack. One other thing that is interesting - to get the lights to turn on, you have to insert your room card key into a little slot just inside the door and leave it in. When you take it out as you leave, the lights automatically all turn off. In spite of our best efforts, we couldn't figure out how to make the A/C work so we just opened the windows.

After answering a couple of emails, downloading the few pictures I had taken and uploading one with a post on Facebook, I fell into bed and tried to get to sleep. In spite of being dog-ass tired and the clock saying it was 11:15, my body was saying it's only 5:15 so once again, I couldn't get to sleep. The last time I looked at the clock before finally passing out, it was 1:30. Marvelous. Just 4 1/2 hours until another full day of meetings start. And my first full day in England thus came to an end. Not very exciting.