I don't know if I've let on to this much, but I'd been sick with a cold this entire trip. It was today that I finally woke up without cold symptoms. No more carrying medicine around with me everywhere I go!
We noticed that all the tables in the cafe downstairs have steak sauce bottles on them, each of which touts itself as the perfect accompaniment to all breakfast foods, including eggs, bacon, and everything else. Really?
The owner of the hotel apparently screwed up our books, and we had to pay for an additional night's stay in cash on the spot because they had only charged our card for one night, and the card reader was back at her main office and not at the hotel. Can you imagine something like this back home? Truly an adventure.
The train ride to London was easy, full of scenery, and relatively short. When we got to London, we were greeted with something we had been warned about - transportation workers on strike. The Underground line to our hotel was shut down for that day due to the strike, so we had to take a roundabout passage, switching lines and going a little out of the way. Not too bad though. We were told to expect more strikes, especially in France, but this was the first one we'd come across.
Finding our hotel was a little troublesome, as we had forgotten to write the address down, and London street names can be a pain (more on this later). When we finally got checked in, we found to our surprise that, for the second time on our whole trip, we could expect to have wireless internet in our room. The first time this happened was back in Munich, and as I mentioned before, that connection was almost unusably slow. Fate being what it is, the hotel's internet connection was down and wouldn't be repaired until the next day. No worries, though, I was basically caught up on everything by then, having learned to get everything done quickly whenever I got the chance.
We went to Westminster Abbey. Outside, there was a huge protest (completely filling a fenced-in open square about the size of a city block). There were cops everywhere. The protest was apparently related to violence in Sri Lanka. Some of the protesters were on a hunger strike. At this point I didn't know much about the Tamil Tigers, only that they were a rebel group fighting the Sri Lankan government for sovereignty. When I did look this up later, I found to my horror that the Tamil Tigers are listed as a terrorist group, and have an abhorrent record as the first group to use suicide bombers, and the first group to use women as suicide bombers, as well as a host of other atrocities. Without more information, I'm not going to delve into that much, suffice to note that it is hard to imagine what the Tamils must have suffered that would justify such horror.
On a lighter note, we noticed on a British TV show that ice cream cones here come with a little chocolate stick in them. We finally found out that this is called a "flake" and that it tastes a little like old cake frosting. Not my thing.
We took a short boat tour across the Thames river. On the boat was an amusing tour guide who kept things humorous as he pointed out sights along the river. He used what I think is the funniest euphemism for prostitutes that I've ever heard: a lady of "negotiable affection." Too funny.
As part of our mission to eat at McDonalds in every country, we tried some from the store in the train station. I was expecting them to call the fries "chips," but alas, in true American style, they were called fries. They tasted exactly the same too. So did everything else. Be warned if you ever go to Europe, eating at McDonalds is not a cultural experience anymore.
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