Home of the brash, outrageous and free

[Subsisting on every type of cold and flu medicine I can get my hands on. I had a horrible night, feverish, coughing, with a temperature fluctuating between 101 and 102. Looks like jet lag and a freezing cold airplane, with everyone coughing on each others recycled air, combined to give John and me our third cold (or flu) of the winter. Appt. today at Kaiser; lets hope my saintly nurse practitioner has some antibiotic miracle up her sleeve, because I am sick of this shit.]

[Let me get the London story underway, and see how far I get. We arrived at Heathrow on Thursday morning, rode the Piccadilly line to Russell Square (I was struck again, as I was in Chicago, by how much of the rest of the world lives in the red brick houses we see little of in earthquake-prone California), and found with little trouble our Bloomsbury B 'n B. Check-in wasn't until 1:30 p.m., so we dropped our bags and decided to go walking, in the general direction of Oxford Street. I gazed wistfully at the British Museum as we walked past, knowing we wouldn't have time this trip even to visit. Lotsa CD shopping in Oxford St., lotsa gazing about and just soaking in the fact that we were finally in London. As Swing Out Sister said, It's Better To Travel (even though I'm paying the price with this flu). After getting back to the B 'n B, checking in and getting situated, we tubed it out to Knightsbridge and got Harrod's and Harvey Nichol's out of the way. That's how it felt, too - a department store is a department store. I don't know what used to occupy the space where Harvey Nick's is today, but the toilets are pre-war dorm, not posh at all. (But possibly cruisy.)]

[After having been up all night to try to fend off jet lag, we didn't have much more energy, so after a disappointing fish and chips dinner near our hotel, and laughing at Victoria ("I never really read books, but I decided to write one") Beckham on So Graham Norton (who was to play an unexpected part in part in our trip later on), we crashed.]

[Which is what I feel like I'm about to do now. More later...]

Previously Next