I know I said I wasn't going to be doing much blogging while I'm away, but it's currently 5:12 am in the morning and I'm having a hard time falling asleep. I had a brief stopover in Denver before hopping on an 8-9 hour flight from Denver to London. Do you know what happens to people's legs when they fly economy for that absurdly long period of time? They cramp. The knees start to hurt. Feet swell. It took an hour or two of solid walking and standing to get myself feeling even remotely normal again.
The weather today was unseasonably lovely; I think it was around 18 degrees Celsius and sunny with no clouds in sight. I checked into my hostel (a very nice clean place), had peppermint tea with one of my roomies, and set out to explore the South Kensington area. Further walking took me to Brompton Road and Knightsbridge, where I popped into Harrods. Ohmigod, the food halls!! I stocked up on little tins of biscuits and shortbread as gifts, but I may go back one evening and just have dinner there. However, today I wasn't very hungry around 5-6pm as I went past Harrods, so instead I popped into Richoux across the road for a traditional afternoon tea instead, little finger sandwiches and scones and all.
After tea, I meant to go to Tate Modern because it's open until 10pm on Saturday nights, but the tube I wanted to take was down. Instead I got off at Embankment and walked around, took the London Eye and got a nighttime view of the city, then crossed the bridge over the Thames and walked around the Parliament buildings. They look pretty spectacular at night when they're backlit.
So far I haven't really been into the shopping yet. Everything is so expensive here that I'm experiencing serious sticker shock. It's priced as it would be back home. This wouldn't be a problem except that the exchange rate for Canadian dollars and pounds sterling is roughly 2:1, so everything costs twice as much as what I'm used to. I think I'm only going to buy things I really, really like and know I can't get back home.
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Man, flying to Europe (or anywhere that involves more than 8 hrs flying) is just painful. My sympathies. Luckily, the destinations make it worth it.
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