Piccadilly Circus and raining - our London Shopover!
Considering that Steph and I were going to be passing through London at least three times during our trip we decided to schedule in a stopover on the ANZAC Day long weekend in London to catch up with the ever present (but ever changing) crowd of friends that always seem to be living for a stretch in Old Blighty these days. To this end, we made sure we had a few "extra cheap" weeks in Bolivia to save up for the horrendous effect that spending Pounds Sterling has on one's wallet.
We were up early on Thursday to catch our 6:30am flight to London, via Miami. The flight out of La Paz was uneventful until we got to Miami where, for some ridiculous reason, they make you clear customs, with your baggage, even though the total time we were going to be spending in the US was a total of 3 hours in the airport. You can imagine me cursing about the stupidity of the situation!!
After we had passed through border control, waited another hour for our bags to come out the conveyor and pass customs, our easy three hours had turned into a frantic 45 minutes for our bags and ourselves to make the flight. We approached the Miami baggage handler who pointed out the tight turnaround (I pointed out the complete shambles and uselessness of Miami airport procedures) and he "kindly" offered to pass on a tip of $5 to the baggage guys to make sure our bags made the flight. I can't believe that we could spend 4 months in Central and South America, but had to wait until we flew through the good ol' US of A to get extorted by an airport baggage handler. Anyway, knowing that $5 was probably worth it, we handed over the cash and grumbled as we ran for our flight, which was on final call by the time we passed back through security and got to the gate.
As we were flying to London, we laughed about the fact we were going to be flying into British Airways new Terminal 5 at Heathrow. For those of you that didn't see the headlines, Terminal 5 had become the new baggage black hole of Europe - apparently in the first week it opened, they managed to lose over 80,000 pieces of luggage (or something like that).
Sure enough, with the odds stacked against us, we waited for two hours in Heathrow baggage claim to discover that our bags had not made our flight. Insert colorful language and shaking of fists by Kyle here!
After filling out appropriate documentation, we dawdled over to Battersea on the tube, where we were going to be staying in our mate Matt's spare room. Steph was lamenting about the fact we were going to be heading out with friends that night and all we had were the clothes on our backs and the free eye mask and socks that you get as part of your overseas economy package. At least I had clean socks!
A laugh while we were out looking for essentials - I now qualify for "Afro Palace"!
So we had a bit of a nap, then headed out for makeup and undie shopping. Thank the lord for Superdrug and Marks & Sparks!
That night we caught with a bunch of friends at the Ten Bells (one of the drinking houses frequented by Jack the Ripper in Victorian times) and afterwards headed to "Le Taj", a curry place on Brick Lane (THE place for Indian Restaurants in London) recommended by Ed (traveller we met in Bolivia), to satisfy Steph's growing curry craving (another part of Steph's Australianisation)!
I can't believe that my fro is now bigger than Nick's!
Trond, Mitesh and Matt - out for curry!
The reason for Steph's hangover - Trond's refills
Thankfully our baggage turned up Saturday morning, couriered direct to our door, with everything intact and working! Steph even managed a smile, despite the huge hangover she had from too much beer and wine the night before.
The weekend itself was actually a great break, just sort of slipping back into the "normality" of catching up with friends, wandering around town, doing some shopping and not visiting any sights or tourist places! We had a fantastic time looking around Notting Hill markets, caught up for drinks at Ja and Fred's place and had a great dinner out with Kasey and Trond on Saturday night.
We had an English fry up brekkie on Sunday morning (not going to be a lot of bacon in the Islamic countries we'll be visiting), more shopping, topped off with a US$50 Devonshire tea at Harrod's that afternoon (two expensive scones!), then curry take out that night (can't Steph get enough?). We then caught our flight from Gatwick to Morocco 'round Monday lunchtime.
Our Harrod's Devonshire Tea - expensive but oh so good!
Huge thanks go out to Matt for letting us stay in his spare bedroom and to everyone for making the time to catch up! We managed to spend a week's budget in three days, had a terrific time and it was a great weekend!
