or how we were told to ensure people thought we were from Australia whenever we were loud an obnoxious in public
So before leaving for London I checked the weather forecast, which confirmed that it was going to be nice and sunny. Hmm, I thought, maybe all the rumours of the lack of sunlight were all lies, and maybe I was bringing in the great weather from Germany with me. I was to find out the rumours were true.
Unfortunately the plane had been delayed, and had to circle around London till a place could be found in the long line of aircraft jostling for a spot. After (what I am sure is to be true) the pilot finally agreed to sell his soul to save his passengers, we finally landed at the airport to be greeted by grey overcast skies. Hmm, strange I thought, just a couple of hours earlier the weather report said sunny?
We were soon to meet Dan, who was Ryans friend. His mission as point man would be train up us greenhorns as quickly as possibly for the bloody battles to come. Ryan and I wide eyed and skittish were led by this seasoned veterans into the belly of the beast that is Londons public transport.
I stared at and attempted to decipher the underground map, which at first glance looked like someone had tried to connect the dots with a shotgun blast of multicoloured spaghetti. As my engineering logic started making sense of the labyrinth, Dan explained to us newbies that in London the weather forecast classified 5 mins of sunlight as being a sunny day. Fair enough I responded, the rest of our days in London were to be sunny as per this classification.
We finally made it through the hour long gauntlet between Heathrow and our Hostel at Kings Cross. Smelling of cordite and wearing our battle scars like medals, we strutted to the nearest pub to be served warm beer? Apparently, the brits drink beer at room temperature! After refuelling we made our way to Madam Tussards, where we got up to all sorts of high jinks and had our photos taken with the likes of Sean Connery and Jim Carrey. Even asked directions from ol Adolph.
After Madame Tussards, we caught up with a number of old friends, a couple of friends of Ryans and my good friend Carnie, or Amanda if you’re being formal. It was decided to go to Brick lane for dinner. Now for those who aren’t aware (as we were previously) Brick lane is a small street with a number Indian restaurants. These restaurants get customers by literally lynching passing clientele. We were repeatedly approached by restaurant sales people who would attempt to lure us with the best deal, be it a free bottle of wine and 20% off everything on the menu, to 3 courses for 10 pounds. While quite intriguing initially, this got quite frustrating as Carnie and I were dying for food, literally wasting away and I could see her wasting away to nothingness and me shortly behind her. Finally Dans pokerface and bargaining skill got us 2 free beers or glasses of wine, and 3 courses for 10 pounds. At this point I didn’t care, I would eaten a stray cat if there was one walking by. Come to think of it there weren’t many cats around and the chicken didn’t really taste quite right… Ill try not to dwell on it too much. However, it was still a great night, and this group of self proclaimed “Australians” left quite happy with themselves.
Over the next day we did the typical tourist things and visited Buckingham palace, the tower of London and London eye. By this time Dans training had paid off as we were able to successfully able to navigate the trenches of London combining travel by bus and train even with a train strike on. We were now travel ninjas without compare. Dan would have been proud of us. Now onto our accommodation arrangements, which were quite interesting. We were packed into a room of 8 bunk beds, which was also fine, however for some reason there seemed to be a problem with the showers, where the lights kept failing and meant that one ended up having a shower and needing to get changed in the dark. Additionally the shower required you to press a button every 10 seconds to keep the water going, and was angled so that it sprayed over your clothes that were hung up on the door. The overall effect this had was that on one occasion I walked around the whole of London with my shirt inside out and pant legs soaked. To add insult to injury, Ryan didn’t pick up that I had my shirt on inside out and it was only in the late afternoon as I looked at my jersey that noticed it looked different somehow. However being the resourceful scavenger that I am, and getting quite frustrated with the shower facilities, I did a shufi and tracked down a lone shower hidden away, with working lighting which didn’t require you to press a button and didn’t wash your clean clothes for you. For some reason I spread the word about this shower as everyone else in our room was frustrated with the same issues, but no one seemed to be able to find it. I think its more to do with my bad directional skills than it being made up in my head.
For our last day we were to catch up with long lost relatives that my mother had got in touch with after our recent Indian genealogy mission. We met up with the lovely Miss Pirkko, who gave me a quick run down of her side of the family and went though some old photos of a deceased relative. Amazingly enough I was able to pick our my mom and dad in several photos who Miss Pirkko was unable to identify in previous attempts. All this was quite exciting as she reminisced and I listened in awe about the old stories, much like I used to when my Granddad would when I was a child. Then we were off to visit more relatives who were 4th cousins I believe (I found it all quite confusing to be honest and a huge information overload, but wonderful none the less). On the way we drove through some of Surbitons wonderful parks which were filled with deer in the hundreds! While New Zealand does have many beautiful parks, we don’t tend to have deer just wandering along while happily.
Finally we met the energetic Miss Elise and her lovely family, where we were treated to wonderful hospitality and more amazing tales of relatives. Also I got lured into accepting Miss Elise as a facebook friend, later on that night after arriving back at our hostel, was treated to over 30 friend recommendations of all the relatives!! Lets just say I didn’t have the time to sort through them all. Something for when I get back to New Zealand perhaps?
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
