OMG London!

This will probably be my last post in a while. I did three in the last two days. In a few days I will be heading up to the school in a rural area with very minimal internet. That will significantly hinder my ability to blog. I wrote a bunch of these now to get some of my blogging obligations out of the way because I knew I wouldn't be blogging in a while. This is something I wrote a while ago but forgot to post. It's about my trip to London on my way here to Uganda. 

As I travelled to Uganda, I had a 14 hour layover in Heathrow: leaving Chicago Wednesday evening, I got in early Thursday morning around 7 am and left for Entebbe that night at around 9 pm. So I spent the day in London. These are my adventures in London.

Around 9, I finally went through customs (the line was really long) and was ready to head out. I grabbed two maps. The first was a tourist map, which displayed London’s main tourist attractions. Unfortunately, it had no street names, just empty streets with dots on it, making it practically useless. On top of that, it didn’t include half the streets in London, namely the small, “unimportant” streets. So without street names, I would try to count so many streets from where I am, say turn on the third street in some direction. This failed miserably though because there would really be two or three unmarked streets to screw me up. I also grabbed a train station map, which was only of the downtown area. It was only useful for a the subway system and a very specific section at that. Anyways after buying my train ticket, I promptly boarded the wrong train. The train I had taken was a one-stop express train to London. Ironically I remembered from visiting London last year how to get to the touristy area of London by the normal subway, but the station it dropped me off of was nowhere near there. And of course the station was out of range for my subway map and my nameless street map.

I got rather confused trying to figure out the subway system. I eventually figured which train I needed to get but couldn’t find where it was at the station. At one point I decided to ask someone for directions to the , who then asked me whFrustrated I decided to just board the next dumb train I saw, and although not the train I had originally wanted was an equally acceptable alternate route. I got off at the first station that looked close to the touristy area – i.e. on my subway map – too mad at the subway system to use it any further.

It turned out to be about two or three miles away from where I wanted. At the station I grabbed a street map with actual street names (hip hip hooray!), but it only covered the few blocks surrounding the station. I started walking to the Buckingham Palace, my first destination both because it was closest to where I was, within about two minutes was beyond the scope of that map. It only really functioned as a reminder of what a street map should be like.

After a while I realized that I should have noticed the palace by now or at least the Thames River (from the river I could find the palace and any other tourist attraction easily). Confused I just kept going. It turns out that I had totally missed Buckingham (not a surprise, I was really shooting for the river) and that slightly west of where I wanted to be the river does a 90 degree turn away from me, meaning that instead of being only a few blocks away, the river avoided me entirely. After about 1.5-2 hours of walking I finally found the queen’s abode. It should be noted that I oddly kind of enjoy learning about a city by getting lost walking through it or at least that’s how I rationalize getting lost so often. It was only 11 am now, and with a 9 pm flight, I had plenty of time, so I wasn’t worried.

After looking at Buckingham for a while, I took the normal touristy trip, looking at the Parliament building, those soldiers with the funky hats marching around, Big Ben, that large cathedral next to the Parliament building, etc. I do this for about 2 hours. I then take a break from the touristy stuff by trying to find a café with wifi. From last year, I knew of a Starbucks with internet next to a certain museum, whose name I forgot and confused with this other museum on the map, (the Imperial Museum). It was a few blocks on the over side of the river. Once I got there I quickly realized it wasn’t the same museum. I asked someone where the nearest place with the internet was, and it turned out that the museum had free public wifi. A museum with the internet. Go figure. I went in, grabbed a table in their café, and hooked myself up. A guy joined me: there weren’t any other open tables. We were talking about my trip to Uganda and then he gave me half his lunch, an incredibly helpful thing for to save money I haven’t eaten all day (I doubt he knew that).

Then I left and decided to find the London Tower, but instead of just reversing my steps back to the Thames and walking along it, the easier but longer route, I decided to try to walk directly. My nameless map completely threw me off, and I wound up I believe about three miles away in a residential area. I eventually managed to backtrack and found the bridge. After walking around it and the nearby castle, I finally took the train back to the airport. It was about 5pm, and it had been a long day (it needs to be remembered that at that point, I hadn’t slept in about 30 hours).