London Crawling
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
It's Sunday morning and after a good lie-in I feel recovered from our 24hrs in London.

The long story: we left our apartment at 6:00pm. Our destination was the Comfort Inn at Harrow so we could drop off our belongings before going to Bombay Dreams in Wembley.

Stephen was wearing dress pants, dress shoes, a blue botton-up shirt and a TIE. I wore a new black pleated skirt (only 45 GBP at House of Fraser marked down from 180 GBP- nice!), black top, black tights, black shoes.

We bought two travel cards, and were on our way to Waterloo, which is usually only 30-40 min.

It took us 2 hours to get to Harrow:

But generally we were impressed by how far the tube system extends, and we found ourselves up in north London suburbia. We arrived at the hotel at 8pm, and had 1 hour to get 5km on public transport. We then realized that Harrow & Wembley Central were on different tube lines, and decided to take a bus, only the bus we needed to take didn't appear to have a bus stop, and there were no information officers, so we had to back track on the tubes to a connecting station, and ended up travelling for another hour on the tube to get to Wembley. Stephen getting anxious. Lesson learned: when in doubt, take a cab.

We arrived at Bombay Dreams, were not frisked for some reason (Stephen had a knife on him to boot) and were greeted by Stephen's co-worker who's birthday we were celebrating. She was dressed beautifully in a sari with jewels on her forehead and exotic make-up. I didn't recognize her. The venue was a medium-size hall that was filled with group tables, a dance floor and bar. Decorations were drapped cloth & chandeliers. There was live asian music and we were two of four white people there.

As is customary, no one is served food until all of the guests have arrived. So we all sat waiting, smoking, drinking wine or non-alcoholic beverages.

The entertainment encouraged people to dance, but tradition is that no one dances until the oldest dance first.

Then a belly dancer (not asian, but Turkish as was pointed out to us) came on the scene. After performing a couple songs, she made her way through all the tables. I pointed to Stephen and she made her way over. Stephen got up and instead of dancing with the lady, started doing "the robot" with his back to her. I mean what the hell was he thinking?!

A hookah pipe was introduced, strawberry.

The food finally arrived, and was delicious. As soon as we finished eating, the dancing started -great for digestion...And so the evening went on.

We left around 1am, and the restaurant staff insisted on calling a cab for us. It turns out they called one of their friends and not a proper cab driver, and we were massively overcharged. But who cares. Lesson learned: when in doubt, call a cab, yourself, and always ask how much the fare will be before you set out.

The hotel seemed to be empty, until we found our room (after a maze of corridors and stairs) and found the only other guests were a gentleman and a prostitute who were enjoying the room next to ours. We could hear them before we even got into our room. It was very strange, they liked role-play and talking a lot. Our room was dusty, smokey, and the bed felt rather unclean.

Nevertheless, we slept until 8:30am. We decided to spend Saturday in Camden market (which is nowhere near Harrow) and that we would wait to eat breakfast when we got there. Good thinking! It only took us an hour to get there!

NOTE: Weekends and Bank Holidays are prime time for public transport engineering works. Stephen sums this up very well "This proves that London is geared towards making businesses run efficiently, and doesn't care about tourists or anyone else."

See if you can come up with a way to get from station: Harrow-on-hill to Camden Town with the following restrictions:

1. The metropolitan line is closed between Wembly Park and Liverpool street.

2. The Circle, District and Metropolitan line are closed Eastbound from Baker Street to Liverpool Street.

3. The Northern line is closed from Camden Town to Kennington. Remember: there are two tracks on the Northern Line.

How do you get to Camden Town? Note: you're hungry and hung-over and only learn of the closures when you arrived at the next tube station...and go.

A map of the tube

Long and the short: we used the bus in the end, which has resulted in a tranport epiphany. I will never go back to tubes again! The buses are quick and reliable! Plus you're above ground (and sometimes on the top of a double-decker) and can sight-see.

There was a great reward when we finally arrived in Camden as we found the best breakfast we've had in England at Solo. Mmm.

We spent the day wandering around, then went to Tottenham court: yes, by bus...but finding the right bus, and which bus stop to catch the right was is a whole other story...yikes...and then wandered around soho a bit. A highlight was when a pigeon dropped out of the sky and splatted in the road. Thank god it didn't fall on my head. Then a car ran over it and I heard the air pop out of it. Absolutely revolting.

We soon found ourselves at a pub near Carnaby street, had lunch, then headed home where I promptly devoured a bag of M&ms.

I can't stress how much the tube sucks.

Today is the day of rest, so not sure about the day's blogability. Stay tuned...