Arriving in London

Monday, July 5
London, Day 1
Immigration and customs was painless and we were still in good spirits when our City Transfer driver found us. However, he led us a merry chase until he finally figured out where he had parked his car, then bundled us through the streets of London to our hotel. I chatted madly with another passsemger for the first half of the long drive, then slept the other half away.
July 5-12 We stayed at the Ibis London Earls Court Hotel
47 Lillie Road, Earls Court, London, UK SW6 1UD
Phone: 011.44.207.610.0880
How great that we were able to get our room right away. That is, after Jan's Visa got declined and we called the number and they told the hotel it was fine, especially since we had bothered to let Visa know that we would be in England for 2 weeks. Mine worked fine, so we got into the room and just crashed. Got up in an hour or so and took a tour of the neighborhood.
Sample comments heard in passing were colorful. Examples include a youngish blonde hustling along with her cell phone to her ear, caught saying loudly "You are a fat, stupid, lazy, fucking slag!" Wonder who she was talking to. And there was a barrow man shouting his wares, "Strawberries! Fresh berries! Anyway you like 'em. Berries for your belly, berries by the bowl. Strawberries!" Otherwise, we could be in any one of many Toronto neighborhoods with Halal meat markets, coffeshops, and pubs. In other words, I loved it. Even the Macdonalds where I signed onto The Cloud open wifi, although the guys trailing dogs that looked like nasty bits of business made us leery of attracting too much attention with the use of the iPad. It garnered lots of interest whenever we used it. There were also the 'Amusement' venues, for slots and so on, and the off-license betting houses, about one per city block. Odd, that.
This first night we ate at a very impressive neighbourhood pub called The Goose. It was easy to pick out the locals, a diverse lot arguing noisily over everything from soccer to politics. We considered the ease and civility of ordering both food and drink at the bar, so that the waitress need only deliver it and clean up afterward. I think we tried the local version of a burger. Good, but a reminder to me that having gone off red meat for the most part I now have a problem digesting it. No more burgers for me.
Next stop was a series of phone stores, looking for the one that could add time to the UK cell that Jim and Lila had lent us. And for any answer to the question of how we might be able to link our camera to my iPad. No luck, really, although one store thought that they could set up a data plan for the phone if we returned the next day. Back to the hotel where we crashed again for a couple of hours and then decided to try the transit system and have a look at the city. The West Brompton stop on the District or Green line was a short walk in the other direction from the Ibis, where we found a most helpful ticket agent who sold us the Oyster cards (topped up Erin's) with a week of time in zones 1 & 2, enough to get us most places in London. And to be used to discount those zones from train tickets to Salisbury. Hello TTC & GO, are you listening??? Two stops later we were at the Earls Court station to make what became our standard change to the Piccadilly or Blue line for a trip to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.


It was a lovely "We're here!" feeling.
















Perhaps because daylight lasts so late into the evening in summertime England, the streets were packed with folks from everywhere as we strolled around, taking pictures of landmarks and architecture.































I was delighted to find a crew from Sadlers Wells setting up an installation for Slow Dance for later in the week.
Back to the hotel for bedtime snacks and it was time to sleep.

[note re iPad limitations: have uploaded these photo images on a laptop and now it is the blogspot composition function that is less than user friendly. However, I am learning and will get better as I go along, I hope.]