London (April 30)

Backup. Backup. Backup.
Sifting through a faulty but very important harddrive that crashed while I was away turned out to be a fairly time-consuming process. Reminded that I could easily lose every picture I've taken while traveling in one simple power surge, I've subsequently spent a lot more time backing up everything I own. In duplicate.

But now that it's done, and now that I've gotten over the post-traveling-blues, it's time to update.

Starting with London.




My flight from Colombo was on Sri Lankan Airlines (owned by the excellent Emirates airlines), and I was notified that in accordance with British aviation rules, the standard metal cutlery has been replaced with plastic cutlery. They apologized for this inconvenience. I liked that. I was seated next to an older guy who I cheerfully helped with his in-seat video & gaming terminal. After showing him how to play the chess game, he proceeded to detail every move he made. And just in case I didn't hear because I had my headphones on and was trying to watch a movie, he would tap me on the shoulder and repeat what I had missed. Wheee, only 10 more hours of this...

In any case I was staying with some of my parents' friends outside of central London, but conveniently on an Underground line. I met up with Paul who had arrived a few days earlier and we headed into the city to take a walkabout.




During this time, I was introduced to Frommer's guide. There was a love/hate relationship with Frommer. He did have a star rating on the major sites, but other than that, it wasn't too useful. It turned into a running gag, with Paul assigning Frommer various titles depending on where we were at the time.




In the brief period we were in the city, we managed to get lost and ended up walking in a giant circle back Piccadilly Circus. We ended the night early as we had a morning ferry to Amsterdam to catch.

about England, from Canada