Tag Archives: London

See You Later UK!

Posted on by

Say Cheese!

Say Cheese!

Our time in the UK was short, shorter than anywhere on the trip yet. You say – the UK has a lot to offer, the transportation system is excellent, why not stay longer? A few reasons: we’ve both been there before, we live on the US East Coast and flights to London are relatively cheap so we will probably go again, and the idea behind this trip was to go places that were a little less accessible to us for whatever reason – distant location, long flight time, crap internal transportation systems. The UK doesn’t fit into any of those categories.

Truth be told we probably wouldn’t have gone to the UK at all had our One World Explorer tickets not demanded we pass through Heathrow to get from Africa to any location in North America. Okay, on second thought the trip wouldn’t really have been complete for one of us (me) had we not been able to catch a game at Anfield. But for the reasons above the UK wasn’t on our “Must See” list for this trip (plus, have you seen the exchange rates lately? Help a brother out Central Banking System).

Anyway, I’m really glad we did. It was a little bit like being back in the states for a few days (sorry if that offends any British readers, but bear with me), we got to converse in English with locals who use that as their first language, meet a long lost family member, got to see a rock show (the Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria -narrowly missed the Beastie Boys again) and attend a professional sporting event. All this and the extra bonus of being able to drink the tap water and eat all the leafy greens our hearts desired – haven’t done that since mid-March!

All in all good things, we will probably see our English Cousins sooner rather than later.

Damn that Dollar!

Posted on by

England is great and London is possibly one of the greatest cities in the world. There are cool things to do, funky clothes to buy, good shows to see, and yummy food to eat (ethinic food of course). Too bad it costs so damn much to do any of it when you’re coming with US dollars.

It’s really simple to figure out the cost in dollars when preparing to make a purchase. Just multiply by two. Most things cost in British pounds about what you would pay in a major city in the U.S. The problem is that with the crap exchange rate, you basically pay double what you would at home for just about everything. Makes me sad. Even the Charity Shop thrift store is too pricey for us. Just taking the Tube, London’s Metro, a stop or two will set you back $4. Ouch. Lucky for us we enjoy walking.

For the most part we’ve gotten over it and are making the most of our time in the UK. Lots of museums are free, though we haven’t really spent any time in them, and there are interesting neighborhoods and markets to explore. We’ve put our precious quid (British slang for the pound) to good use for The Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria and of course the beloved Liverpool Football Club.

Football and music. Two things that clearly merit the expenditure. It is England after all!

Things to Do in Beijing

Posted on by

I have to admit – we probably shouldn’t even do an entry on Beijing until we go back there next month. Our three nights and two days there on this leg were mainly occupied with chores: picking up tickets from the travel agency, finding a camera shop to repair our busted equipment, trying to make a few changes to our airline tickets and doing laundry. Not exactly blog-worth material, I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading right here.

Beijing is – surprise – a huge city. And everything happening there right now revolves around making sure that the facilities for the Olympics next year are done way ahead of time. The Chinese don’t want another “Athens” happening on their watch. There are billboards around making sure no one forgets it either – one counts down the days until the games begin. There are reports on the news promoting how many stadiums are done, how many days ahead of schedule they are and so forth.

But still, most of this is material for a future blog entry when we actually do something in Beijing beyond our laundry. The only real drama this time around was what has become known between LeeAnne and I as “The Qantas Affair”.

We’re at a point in our trip where we are over half way done, and we’re ready to make a few tweaks to our itinerary. A few date changes and a few destination changes. After looking long and hard at Mauritius, we just can’t find a place to stay for a reasonable amount of money, so we’re going to ditch it and trade those flights for flights from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls. Also, we’re hoping to change our flight from Nairobi to London to a flight from Johannesburg to London, it’s just going to be a lot easier. That is, if we can get ‘er done.

QANTAS we are quickly learning stands for “Queer And Nasty Try Another Service”. Actually, that’s too harsh, we’ve used them to make ticket changes on this trip already and everything went fine, but the Beijing office is a cause for alarm.

The people behind the desk in Beijing have no experience with the One World ticket, didn’t know how to make any changes and apparently don’t know where Victoria Falls, Zambia, or Namibia are, much less what their airport codes are. By the time we left the office, I was actually glad to have nothing done and our paper tickets to Mauritius safely in our hands. First, do no harm.

So nothing may come from our visit to QANTAS in Beijing, but we still have opportunities to make changes in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Jo’Berg. We have to draw a high card in one of those cities. Wish us luck.