Arrival in London - week 1

The 13 hour flight to London was one we thought we were prepared for – I had planned to get a certain amount of sleep, watch a certain amount of TV and movies, and read a certain amount. Unfortunately the sleep part didn’t happen. By the end of the flight I was feeling very worse the wear. Even the Hugh Grantesque voice of the pilot wasn’t enough to make her giggle by the end of the flight.

Flying over London upon the descent we were struck by how flat it is. Finally we touched down – land never felt so good! We entered Heathrow, travelled on several escalators, and picked up our bags, all set for customs. But to our surprise we exchanged pleasantries with the customs man and before we knew it we were free! We turned the corner and we were almost out of the airport. Strangely enough we found a continuing theme – in Hong Kong and now in London there were always several cops with huge guns standing around. Our first step was to get to Georgia’s house. We decided to get a cab as neither of us felt like we were in the right frame of mind to negotiate the tubes, especially with our life packed into four suitcases and several bags. Georgia had suggested a cab would be about £40. Unknown to us though there are 2 types of cab in London. We chose a black cab, so ended up paying twice that much… But we thought it was almost worth it. Our cabbie was the typical London cabbie – full of all sorts of interesting facts, and if he took us a little out of the way in order to give us a little tour, well, good on him. He asked us what part of Australia we were from. We told him New Zealand. “oh, yeeah…” As an interesting aside, Black Cab cabbies have to sit a full-on test covering the streets of London in order to get their license. It’s called “The Knowledge”. The cabbie took us through the City of London and showed us the little dragons that marks the outskirts of the City. He showed us Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall... It was surreal for us passing through all of these iconic places and I couldn’t help relating them all back to Monopoly.

We reached Georgia’s place and the cabbie gave us a little background into the area of Bethnal Green – namely Brick Lane and its alternate name of Curry Lane, because of all the Bangledeshi immigrants. We were pleasantly surprised to find out how close Bethnal Green is to the City. Georgia was shocked and amused when we told her how the cabbie had taken us on the little tour that he had – and she wondered how that was a remotely sensible route to take from Heathrow to Bethnal Green.

It was great to see Georgia and stay in her lovely warm (and big – for London) flat. The next day she went to work – and we lazed around and slept. It probably took about a week to fully adjust to the time difference. Up until then I would get extremely tired at about 6pm then again at about 9. Rob would get tired around 4pm then perk up after that. We tried to develop a pretty normal routine though and so it didn’t take too long.
On the Thursday (we had arrived on a Tuesday, did nothing on Wednesday) we went out. We decided to get out of the tube at St Pauls, and make that our first sightseeing experience. It is, of course, amazing.
We had a look inside but to get past the reception you have to pay. We decided we’d wait until we were showing someone round before we would pay to have a look inside.

From St Pauls we wandered and found the Millenium Bridge. I was keen to find the Tower of London (unbeknownst to me this was not the way to go...), so we crossed the bridge and – lo and behold – we found the Globe Theatre, of Shakespearean fame. We decided to buy a ticket for a guided tour. It was completely worth it. The tour guide was very passionate and knowledgable about the theatre and we felt like we could imagine exactly what it was like. It made us quite enthusiastic about going to a play in the summer, but also it made us quite keen to sit in the seats, and not be “Groundlings”... Shakespeare wrote his plays with the theatre in mind so it is apparently a very different experience watching a performance in this theatre.

The exhibition hall was also very interesting, and has a lot of information about theatre in medieval and renaissance times, and what happened to all of London’s old theatres (they mostly all burnt down).

In the exhibition hall there are a couple of tapestries from New Zealand! A club in NZ had got together and made these tapestries for the Globe's re-opening.

When we were wandering around after that we came across The Clink – One of London’s first prisons. They have made it into a little museum. There are graphic descriptions of the punishments dealt out to the lawbreakers – including the stocks, ball and chain, drowning, beheading, and of course, hanging. If the prisoner was lucky enough to live he/she would just have to go without food, warmth or bedding.

The rest of the week we pretty much spent flat hunting – as Georgia’s flat was pretty crowded and we were taking over her bedroom...

Interestingly enough we came across some obvious scams while looking for a short-term flat on Gumtree. Places would be advertised in Mayfair and Notting Hill for £100 a week (this is about a quarter of what you would expect to pay in these areas), and we contacted a couple of them, only to receive emails back detailing how the owners of these flats were Reverends, and were off travelling on Crusades for children, and how they were pleased that such upstanding citizens such as us would find it in our hearts to take extremely good care of their places. We never got to the stage where they got our account details for the “security deposit”...
Finally we found a reasonable looking place in Shepherds bush that didn’t require any deposit, and were so sick of looking by this stage that we snapped it up.

Now that we had that sorted we were able to relax a little and we went out Saturday night to a friend of Georgia’s birthday – unfortunately we didn’t last very long due to the lingering jetlag... The next day we went to Brick Lane market – a short walk from Georgia’s place and brilliant. The main bit is indoors and packed with trendy clothes and amazing food. I couldn’t resist and bought a handmade necklace, and dreamed of the day that I will have made some money to shop with... Rob stuck to lamb curry.