Holiday Inn London Heathrow West Drayton

... did SEE the outside of: St. Pauls Cathedral, The Tower of London, The Globe, and the National Monument. AND we rode a double decker bus.

Our ferry to Amsterdam was awesome. We boarded close to midnight and had our own private cabin with our own private shower. Slept while we travelled, woke up in Holland! (and saved a bunch of money!)

The Track past Slough. Windsor Castle. We got ourselves to Paddington and then got on a Great Western Train to Slough. The train was express for about 10 minutes and wow it motors along - I reckon more than 100KPH. We got off at Slough and on another train and got to Windsor with the other zillion people. Handed in the London Pass at ticket box 6 - got our passes and headed through the security checkpoint - bags X-ray ...

... enjoyed chatting about Fordham, the Brits, and our lives abroad. After a bit of wandering near The National Gallery (so pretty at night) and up and down the Strand, we found the Novello Theatre and Allison headed back to her flat as I went in to get my Shakespeare fix. I forgot how different they name things in theatres over here, so as I went down what seemed like a never ending flight of stairs to the Stalls where my £20 seat was, I naturally assumed that I would have a terrible seat ...

... pap** and paint for that virtual reality! It's was extremely neat. We walked some more through Hackney as the sun set, stopped at a little store called sh!, and then went to see the White Cube Gall**y on the same block. This is an unbelievable coincidence to me. I have absolutely c**tainly checked out the White Cube online somehow, half a lifetime ago, when I was still just a kid with a comput** in Hawaii. To come all this way and by chance stay in the same neighborhood as this ...

... chaos. I housesat the following week so was good to know where all the important things were like wifi password and wine cellar. The latter of which he even gave me full use of! Bonus. Unfortunately my girlfriend Josie had housesat a few weeks prior and drank all the booze hahahaaa joking!! You'd have to be George Best to do that! So yeah spent a week housesitting Philip's pad which ...

... Well a coffee at Starbucks on Oxford street and window shopping concluded my tour and I reached coach station to find my coach delayed indefinitely....... finally it came and I crashed on my way back to Halifax dreaming about my London trip which was just perfect and amazing............ Reached Halifax at 11 in the night and my friend picked me up and had cooked dinner...... so sweet of him.........

... have a nap. We went to this cafe and got just a baked spud to share. For 4 pounds or over 8 dollars! So i was thinking for that price it would be a nice oven baked spud with salad! WRONG! In a big way! The guy serving us, grabbed a potatoe out a bag with his bare hands, chucked it in the microwave - gross already! Then when that was finished he pulled it out with his bare hands and oh my gosh! Get this! He punched it with his fist!!!! What ...

... and therefore not worthy of a Sunday sermon. I remember also looking around and seeing a little boy with his father, and the little guy was getting pretty antsy. Somethings never change. I remember going to church with my mother, when I was small and I really only came to sing the hymns. I still smile at that. The fact that you can go miles from where you started, and still see that some things stay the same.

... music and its proper place in our world. I'd like to pass it on to you here: STANDING IN THE SHADOW OF SUN RA By Dylan Harding From the moment that the American inventor Thomas Edison created the means by which we could record vibrating airwaves the road to hell has been paved with the rotting carcasses of criminally unscrupulous record company executives, publishers, club owners, journalists, distributors, and all other forms of scum that prey on the creative talents ...

... of mine in the past 2 months! Well, he has a different story, but hey - this is MY blog! So I threw away my highly detailed 2 page instructions for the contingency plan to get to Chris Swiderski's place and cruised into my hometown of Reading. As much as everyone bags out Reading, I actually find it nicer each time I go there - maybe it is cos I don't hang around at night? After a few chilled days with Mark & Louise, I dragged Mark screaming and kicking ...