I hate London.
1. It is so noisy, busy, colourful and vibrant. Sickeningly so.
2. It is disgusting how cheap books are here. It is wrong when you can buy new paperbacks for £3. And the bookshops? There are far too many of them. The ones in Oxford make me even more cross. (Thank you, KR, for showing them to us!)
3. My feet hurt because there are so many sights to see.
But seriously, folks, it is truly amazing being here and seeing all these places I have only ever read about or seen on the telly, before now. Windsor Castle is bigger than it looked on Spooks. Oxford and Cambridge - phwoooaaar! I have now driven on a Roman road. Big Ben is spectacular. The Thames doesn’t smell. The museums - I think my favourite so far is the Natural History Museum (dinosaurs and ichthyosaur fossils - what’s not to like?).
All systems go! We’re all packed. We’re travelling really light, and don’t have anything to check-in. Minimal electronics (camera, mobile phone, no laptops), a few casual clothes, one pair of shoes (on our feet). The downside - this means we won’t be able to eat in posh restaurants. However, given that we haven’t made any bookings, I don’t think it would have been realistic to expect to be able to get in anyway. In any case, posh doesn’t have a monopoly on good flavours, and I’m sure we’ll enjoy sampling the national cuisines.
Apart from knowing where we’ll be, and a rough idea of some of the touristy sights we’ll try and see, we haven’t got a detailed itinerary. I’m going to enjoy exploring.
Not sure how much I’ll be blogging; it will all depend on what sorts of facilities the hotels have or how much we want to sit in Internet cafes, I think.
The big trip is now only days away, but I haven’t actually started packing yet. However I have already organised one of the (to me) most important things for any trip: my reading material.
I’m not sure how I’ll survive the long flight to London, but I am counting on the fact I will have a good book to distract me. I will be reading (rereading) The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, a compilation of 22 classic Sherlock Holmes stories. This volume, purchased secondhand, contains my favourite Sherlock Holmes story, The red-headed league. The theory is that I will be able to abandon this particular book if I need to, as I already have a well-read and well-loved copy of Sherlock Holmes - if I end up buying too many books, for instance. However I am not 100% confident that I will be able to just leave it behind somewhere, as I hate disposing of books (no, Bookcrossing is not, and has never been, for me).
M too has been planning his airplane distractions, and has got two novels: Halting State by Charles Stross and Infoquake by David Louis Edelman. (I’d like to read these two, too!) He’s also got some games for his Nintendo DS.
Today’s my last day of work for a few weeks. Here’s to hoping I finish off my To Do list!
