chrisg's Tour Diary

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October 14, 2006
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October 11, 2006

Wow, we're in London. Took another redeye last night, and arrived into Heathrow at 10 in the morning. For once, I've been trying hard to sleep during the flights, which makes arrival a little bit easier, but only a little bit. British Airways is kind enough to give you a change of socks, an eye mask, and a toothbrush for the flight, which also help. And they still serve food and alcohol. The sleep, combined with the shorter flight time from New York, makes it seem all the more bizarre that we're in another country. Unlike our visit last year, where the weather was almost uniformly sunny, we arrive into a downpour. After getting through immigration (where I got a nice grilling) and customs, we find the van that we've rented for our journey. It's similar to our van from last year, only it's larger and there's no smell of smoke. Oh, and the steering wheel is on the British side. And the gear shift is in the left hand. In preparation, I've spent the past month using my computer mouse with my left hand, trying to gain some coordination. But it's still a little frightening, so I'm happy to give Dan the first driving leg. He gets us to our friend Sarah's house in Ealing, where we immediately proceed to get a parking violation.

We all desperately want to sleep, but there are errands to run. Chris takes the tube to go pick up the CDs that we've shipped into the country, and I go to pick up a mobile phone for my stay. Sarah recommends a store called Argos. She pulls out a catalog that appears to have everything under the rainbow, and we find a section with various pay-as-you-go phones. Based on the catalog, I'm expecting a huge store with aisles and aisles of products, from which I'll have no problem selecting the perfect phone. But when I get there, all I find is an island with twenty of the catalogs that Sarah had showed me earlier. Weird! It seems like such a leap of faith to buy a product sight unseen. But I guess it's just like shopping online. I write down my catalog number, get in line for a cashier, pay, and then go to a pickup counter where the item quickly and almost magically appears. The cashier lines in this store have the same invention used in the grocery store across the street, where a pleasant English woman's voice tells you which cashier is ready for you. "Number two, please. Number five, please. Number five, please." I wonder if anyone knows whose voice has been used for the recording. Is she famous, like the moviefone guy?

After a nap, we sit down to nice home-cooked dinner with Sarah and Ollie, trading stories and catching up. Almost bedtime, but one more errand to run. We all pile into the van and head from Ealing, which is at the westernmost edge of London, to George's place in Stoke Newington, which is on the northeast side. Two fun things about London streets: 1) they change names all the time. One of the streets we take goes through three different names in less than ten miles. 2) Finding street names is close to impossible when you're driving in the dark. When they exist, they are printed on the sides of buildings rather than on stand-alone signs. Thankfully, we experienced this last time, so Adrienne has thought ahead and bought a very detailed map of London. Ollie has marked a course for us, and so we end up only making a couple of wrong turns. It takes us about two hours roundtrip, which seems crazy to us given that we've traveled only about 30 miles in total, but Sarah and Ollie are surprised that we get back as quickly as we do. So now we can sleep? Not quite yet, there's a vodafone music awards show on tv, and even though it's really horrible, and we only know half the bands, we watch it to the bitter end.

This entry is part of the US/UK 2006 tour
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October 14, 2006
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October 9, 2006
© 2005 Citizens Here and Abroad ·  · Photography by Jason Koxvold