Simple pleasures

I came to London with ‘no plans’, and while the Monopoly mission has proven a mostly fun distraction, the basic lack of plans hasn’t really changed much.  However, that isn’t to say that none of our party had plans.

Justine had a lot of plans.  Not having been here for 20 years, she has things to do and places to see.  Unfortunately, it turns out to be rather slower getting around with 4 or 5 of us than when she has been here before, and so her plans have had to be scaled back a bit.  There is so much to see here that you would never be able to do it all in four days anyway, so hopefully the revised agenda isn’t too unsatisfactory for her – and the things that we do get to are all going to be pretty interesting.

Lauren had one thing on her list, and one thing only: to ride on a red, double-decker bus.  We did our best to over-complicate things by asking pointless grown-up style questions like “where” and “when” and “what direction” and a whole lot of other completely pointless things.   Once we got over that, we just wandered down to Oxford St and got on the first red dou
ble-decker bus that came along – which was exactly what she wanted, and a surprisingly soul-lifting thing to do.

Even better, we got to sit in the front row up the top, which was also precisely what she wanted.  It turns out to be an awesome place to see London from.  Aside from being a weirdly dissociated place to watch the traffic from (there were several times I was listening for the bumps as we ran over pedestrians and small cars, none eventuated), it is exactly what the London Eye is not.  It’s a superb, immersive, ground level view of London, where you see the shops, the roads, the people and the buildings, all at eye level.  Save yourself time and money if you come here, skip the big ferris wheel and just go riding the front seat of random double-decker busses.

Our particular random bus went down Oxford St, and then rather conveniently down Park Lane and past Mayfair.  I’ve accepted that I won’t get to every place on the Monopoly board (Old Kent Road, for example, is simply not likely to be doable), and these two were going to be hard without this little bus ride!

Aidan and mum did a quick trip out to Kings Cross Station to see the Harry Potter references (man is that book everywhere!).  Ka-ching!

Turns out that that station is right on Euston Road at the point it turns into Pentonville Road.  Ka-ching, ka-ching!  Not only that, but they were sharp enough to spot the underground stop for The Angel (a collection of buildings in Islington).  Ka-ching – and with their good work I can now buy a hotel there!

Our evening finished off with a train ride out to Worcester Park to visit a childhood friend of Justine’s and her family, where we celebrated the great weather with a lovely BBQ and conversation.  While we did that, Mum just popped out to Leicester Square to catch a movie, because she could.

For all that (one bus ride, one BBQ – perhaps not that tough a day I guess), one of the quirkiest parts of the day was spending half an hour with a lovely London Transport lady whose name was, according to her badge, ‘Max Power’.  I need to see some more of these people and see if they have name tags or if they really do have little slogans on them.  If that is her name, she should be doing something way cooler than just providing outstanding customer service to confused tourists in sweltering underground station foyers.