so the overnight bus to london was a success, overall, but i’m not sure i’d do it again. i didn’t go with the bus with extra leg room and leather seats after all, because it turned out you only got those for the last few hours, and in exchange you had to sit in birmingham for 45 minutes, change buses, and make more stops. for a while i thought that it would be better to be officially engaged in bus travel for a few more hours (and thus with full license to sleep on the bus) than it would be to get to london at 6:45 and be tired but self-conscious about sleeping in the bus station until a more reasonable hour, but then i wised up.

mostly, i remembered that Changing buses sucks because you have to worry about your bags, and the trip is broken up into stupid chunks of time that don’t lend themselves to very much other than vacant staring.

and then i realized that 6:45 is almost 7, and people are awake then.

so straight through it was.

i almost missed the bus, due to a dangerous cocktail of my tendency to not leave until the last possible second and my inability to really convince myself that it takes longer than i think it does to walk with all my bags. i got there just in the nick of time, and the bus turned out to be full, which surprised me a little bit. i had to get over it, though, and figure out where to sit, so at first i stopped for a minute in that front seat that always has a bag in it but never a person, so that i could survey the bus and choose who to annoy by squeezing in next to them just when it had seemed safe to relax.

this wasn’t a fun decision, and while i was standing there the bus driver came back on and said “that’s where the other drivers sit.” to which i replied, “oh, ok.” and kept trying to figure out where to go. i guess he was expecting me to scurry away immediately, though, because then he said, with some exasperation in his voice “you’ll have to move if someone else gets on!” and he grabbed the little bag on the seat, which apparently was his.

this was awesome, because it solved my problem And gave me my own seat, and while i would rather have not annoyed the driver, it was better than annoying the driver And annoying someone else who i was going to have to sit by for 8 hours, so it seemed best to just settle in and enjoy the extra leg room and the view. i consoled myself by promising to be a good sport about moving if necessity required it.

i got about half of the trip, which was nice, but it wasn’t until the other driver finally arrived that the full repercussions of my temporary reprieve sunk in, because then i had to pick one of the seats where someone had already made themselves comfortable, and that sucked. i hovered for a minute in one where the other person was actually asleep because it was one of the few where there was actually some room to sit (most people had their bags on the other seat or something), but then the bus started moving and i really hadn’t seen a better place so i just squeezed myself in and hoped that the woman wouldn’t freak out when she woke up with a stranger beside her. it turned out ok, but it was very cramped, and sleep did not come at all easily for the rest of the ride.

but enough about the bus trip, yeesh.

i’m in london!

when i arrived at victoria station, i wandered around looking for the place to leave my luggage and then headed out into the city with my daypack and the idea that i would just wander around and find somewhere to sit and eat the sandwich that i had brought along for breakfast. then maybe i could just head straight to brick lane and find a coffee shop until it was time to meet the guy from whom i am letting the room. his name is dominic, and i will call him that now, because it is shorter than “the guy from whom i am letting the room”, and more friendly.

i had no idea where i was when i emerged from the station, but i saw some little signs that seemed to want to help me discover the answer, so i approached them and one said “buckingham palace ->”

i was too tired to think of taking a picture for the purpose of annotating this story, so you will have to forgive me. here is a sign you may have missed from the scotland pics, though:

anyway, buckingham palace seemed like as good a suggestion as any, since it would start my tourist wanderings off on a solid foot, give me a place to walk, and isn’t there a park near there? perfect for sandwich eating.

it was a bit of a walk but the signs continued, and the fact that i was on “buckingham palace road” was a rather reassuring backup. there was no missing it once i arrived, though there weren’t many people there apart from the guy picking up trash, and he looked at the few tourist types with some bemusement. i’m sure that if he was not obliged to be out in the cold at 7 in the morning, he could think of several better things to be doing, so we probably seemed a bit silly, and i couldn’t really disagree.

there was an indian couple puttering around the fountain and they took my picture for me in exchange for me returning the favor, so there ya go. me in london. in case you thought i was making the whole thing up.

they apparently don’t guard the palace in the winter, so no guys with straight faces and funny hats, but that was ok. there was indeed a park right next door (or 3 parks, depending on how you look at it), so i wandered there. it had rained so the benches were wet, but i ate my sandwich anyway, and watched the joggers.

there was a funny monument kind of thing with water running across rock in that fashion that seemed to be quite popular for a while, and i stared at it for a bit before walking up and discovering that it is a monument to the canadians who served with the british in the world wars.

it is black slate with some maple leaves etched into it, and mother nature is helping at the moment because thousands of crisp golden maple leaves are scattered in the area and mingling in the waters of the fountain.

the maple trees must have been there before the monument (it was installed in the 90s), and i don’t know if they chose the spot for their companionship, but it did make the whole thing rather more striking than i think it would have been otherwise, as i couldn’t help but extend the fallen soldier metaphor to the fallen leaves, and that was kind of deep for 7 in the morning with no sleep.

my tentative plan at that point was to head back to the station and take the tube to my new neighborhood, because i didn’t really know where i was and it seemed more important to find my way to the flat and get my bags squared away than to give myself a navigation lesson. all of my bags are heavier than i wish they were, so even just the one i was carrying was something of a hindrance to full bore exploring, and i had accomplished my mission of greeting london and eating my breakfast.

on the way out, however, i looked at the little map by the gate, and learned enough from it to deduce that i was actually headed in the right general direction, so backtracking all the way to the station didn’t make much sense. i could wander a bit further along the edge of the park and end up at another tube station, and for some reason i thought i remembered that it was one of the stations that wasn’t that far from where i was going, so walking could make some sense after all.

long story shorter, i was wrong about the tube station being one that was close to where i was going, but it was still a nice walk, and by the time i took my book out, discovered where i was, hovered in line at the tube station long enough to realize that if i took the tube there and back and there again (to get my bags) it would cost £9 and that sucked because i really need to be spending as little as possible until i figure out a job, i ended up just deciding to walk the whole way. later i realized that i could have bought a day ticket for £5, but i was not aware of this at the time, so it didn’t matter.

the length of my walk seemed to impress dominic somewhat, when i finally found him, but all i can say is that i like walking in cities, and after i sat for a while in charing cross train station waiting for some bank machines to open and learning that i would fall asleep if i sat still for too long, it actually made more sense for my particular brand of tired self to just keep plodding along mindlessly than have to negotiate things like new transit systems and crowds of people and figuring out when i get to my stop.

so that was that.

the bonus was that it was free, and gave me a tour that included (apart from buckingham palace and st. james’s park, which is where i had started), scotland yard, trafalgar square, the strand, fleet street, st. paul’s church and quite a few theaters with big flashy signs. i definitely felt like i had arrived in london, and it was fun to have that feeling where a place that you have heard about all your life starts lining up with a place in your actual experience of reality.

so better than sitting a few more hours on the bus, that’s for sure. :)

unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries in trafalgar square, so if you want to see more pictures, they will have to be of things like this squirrel, who took my attention for a while because he was so very silvery grey.

i eventually made my way to brick lane, found coffee and the internet, met up with dominic, got my key, and was introduced to my new home, wherein in promptly slept like the dead for many hours.

more on the flat, and on other things i am discovering in london now that i am awake and without heavy luggage to hold me down, in the next edition.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 10:13 am and is filed under things i do, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.