A visit with friends

  London, United Kingdom
Monday, December 5, 2005

"There are places I'll remember all my life
Though some have changed...
All these places had their moments...
In my life I've loved them all"
- The Beatles, "in my life"

I've come full circle. Once again I find myself in London. It seems I end up in this city often. The trip started here and finishes here.

The flight from Rio was a long one. I slept a little but always have trouble on airplanes. I arrived at Heathrow bright and early, but no one was there to greet me. Jon and Becky had overslept so were a wee bit late picking me up. Not too bad though, I was just worried I may have told them the wrong terminal I'd arrive at. Oh, to refresh memories, I met Jon, Becky and Laura in Cambodia and travelled with them through Vietnam. Jon drove us back to Southampton and we took a wander around the big town. It's freezing here (literally)!!! My body is going through shock adjusting from the heat and humidity of Rio to this! In the evening I played some indoor futbol with Jon and some of his friends. Can't say I played that well. After the game, we went over to Laura's for Chinese takeaway dinner...a traditional Thanksgiving meal.
The Brits took me on a daytour around the area on Friday. The first stop was the stadium of the Saints (Southampton's football club). Jon loves the Saints despite them dropping out of the premier league to a lower division. Next stop was Wincester. I was thinking I had been there back in '93 but I was actually thinking of Salisbury. Wincester has "the round table" in one of its museums. There wasn't any information as to whether they think it's the actual round table or just something made based on the legend. It is damn old though. We also paid a visit to the local cathedral. The bakeries in town were busy so we went to one in a nearby town and got some food. Stopped by Becky and Laura's parents' afterwards and had our lunch there. Nearby to to the parents' is Newforest where we took the dog for a walk.

Newforest was used as "Sherwood Forest" in the Robin Hood movie. Back to Southampton. Jon and I played X-box at his place then went out to the pub with his housemates. A new law had just been passed allowing English pubs to stay open longer (they previously had to close by 11:30pm). This didn't seem to affect the way the English drink though...still pounding their beers. I had got through about 1/3 of my first pint when Gary was getting his third. We played some foosball at that first pub then moved on to another place where Becky and Laura met up with us. We had to stop for chips (french fries) on the way home.
Saturday morning I woke up with a sore throat and fever. I'm sure the 60 degree (F) temperature change from Rio to England didn't help. Being sick just seemed to suck away my energy and I felt like taking naps all the time. This kind of put a kink in my plans to go north and visit Jayne and her baby in Manchester. I ended up staying in Southampton a couple days longer than I originally intended in hopes that I at least wouldn't be contagious anymore when visiting other people. The next couple days were spent mostly resting to try and get over the cold. We did make a trip out to the village of Beaulieu on Sunday as well as a small port village.

On Tuesday Jon took me to the train station in the morning and I caught the train up to Manchester. I was able to get some reasonable good deals on train tix by purchasing in advance. There were some nice snow-covered hills to see outside the window on the ride up. Jayne met me at the train station with her new son, Frank. Well, he was new to me anyway (he's over 5 months old). [I originally met Jayne in New Zealand in 1999 and was at her wedding here in England in April '04.] Went back to her house and hung out there for the evening. Played around with little Frank, and Jayne's husband, Paul, came back from work. Jayne cooked us up dinner and I had to eat vegetables! I somehow managed.
We were a bit slow getting ourselves out the door the next day. Started off about 12:30pm. Made a stop by Old Trafford. There were wreaths and jerseys up along a wall in memorial to George Best who had recently died (he was a football player from years past). Tours of the stadium were too expensive so we just browsed the store. On to downtown area. Frank had been well behaved up to this point but then had a bit of a meltdown when he became hungry. He kept crying and crying until Jayne pulled over and fed him. We wandered the downtown area checking out some of the old buildings and the Christmasy area around town hall.

There was a market setup with crafts, food and drinks. It was quite cute. Did a brief look in the art museum then back to Jayne's. I took a nap then Paul got stuck with babysitting duties as Jayne and I went out for dinner and drinks.

Jayne dropped me off at the tram stop Thursday morning, but thanks to my good luck the tram was running late. After waiting 30 minutes (it's supposed to come every 10 min), I decided I better get a taxi if I was going to make it to the train station on time. So got a taxi and made it with about 5 min to spare. Phew! Rode the train to York and switched to another train for Edinburgh. Euna lives in a town close to Edinburgh and was going to be in the city Thursday and Friday, so I came up to see her. [Euna was on the Africa tour with me.] I've already seen the major sights on past visits. I wandered around town and got a few pictures that evening. Went to the market to get food for dinner and just cooked it up at the hostel. Checked out a pub nearby that had live music, but I didn't stay long.

More wandering and wasting time on Friday. This was Euna's first trip back to Edinburgh since her travels so she had friends to visit. But, of course, I should come first since we all know how special I am. At one point I found myself in a graveyard by a church below Edinburgh Castle taking pics and realized I was singing "take me out to the ballpark" to myself. Not sure what kind of demented mind comes up with that sort of song for a graveyard... In the afternoon I realized Spanky could use a kilt so went shopping. Checked several shops and the best I found was a bear with a kilt, but it was $13...I couldn't justify spending that on a novelty. In the evening I met up with Euna and her friends at a bar. The bar was having 2for1 drinks 'til 8pm so we had to take advantage. Spanky came out for a visit...Anna thought I was very weird. We stayed there quite a while before Rachel, Euna and I moved on to a "rock bar" called Opium. We hung out upstairs and went out on the dancefloor after a while. Dancing to rock music is awkward. There were guys doing the "I'm playing guitar" pose while swinging their heads all around. I called it an evening about 2am. It didn't feel like Euna really appreciated my visit up to Edinburgh to see her.

I caught a train to London Saturday morning. It takes about 5 hours to get there. The trip seemed to go sllloooow. I got off at King's Cross to switch to the Underground - that was a mess (I had to walk past two closed entrances and go across the street). Rode the tube to Clapham Common and got to see Helen very briefly before she caught a bus to go to a wedding. She gave me the keys to her flat so I could stay there. [I met Helen on the Egypt tour and saw her again in Australia.] I took the tube back out to see some of the sights of London (Oxford Circus, Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus). The sidewalks were really packed with people Christmas shopping. There were a couple other people I hoped to hear from to do stuff that evening, but didn't have their mobile numbers for contacting. Back to the flat for some i-net and tv before bed.
Slept in and went out for more sightseeing (not that I haven't seen these things before...just figured I should see 'em if I was in the city). Stopped by the Apple store, though it wasn't too exciting. I picked up some food from the market and had a little picnic lunch in the park around St Paul's Cathedral. Went by the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Helen was back from the wedding and met up with me at Temple station. From there we went to Somerset House to see the ice skating rink.

We didn't ice skate though ($$ and we both don't skate well). Walked along the Thames to Big Ben, then through Regent Park and up to Trafalgar Sq. Looked in a couple of the souvenir shops for stocking-stuffers but nothing was less than $4. Where's my 99cent souvenir store? Took the tube back to the flat, watched some tele and had Chinese takeaway for dinner.
Said goodbye to Helen in the morning and a bit later I left for the airport via the tube. It takes a while to get there. Had some lunch at the airport and got to wait around extra long as the plane was an hour late taking off. Flew in continuous twilight for quite a while over Greenland and icy Canada enroute to Seattle.

The End.

Well, that's the end of my round-the-world trip. Over 50 countries in about 21 months! It's hard to comprehend it all. Days galavanting around, going place to place, meeting new people. I can't say I'm looking forward to getting a job and being stuck in a cube all day. That's going to be a hard adjustment. It will be nice to be back for Christmas and see everybody.

There'll be a couple more entries with final thoughts, a day-by-day itinerary and statistics (e.g., 42 flights). These updates won't be quite as interesting as the standard travelogue though.