London

Off to Londinium

We have said our goodbyes to Margaret last night as she is off to work at 0700.  We breakfast and have our final chat with Michael who kindly drives us to the station to catch our train to London.

Boarding the train we find that the booking system is not working so we source alternate seating in the carriage. But, that is the KIWI way and not the way of the Pomgolians. It was fascinating to sit back and listen to the consternation that ensured when travellers boarding the train found others sitting in the seat which they had booked. No explanations about how the booking system had failed could shift them. “I booked that’s eat and that is the seat I want to sit in” Thankfully no-one tried to oust us from our purloined seats. World War Three would have been on the cards.

We change trains in Taunton and fast train it to London Paddington. The weather turns to crap and rain settles in. Thankfully it has dried up a bit by the time we reach our destination. Following our Google directions we make it to our hotel which is only a 10 minute walk from the station. Looks clean and tidy but it seems we have to pay up front before we can access our room. The lass behind the counter “helps” out by reaching over and hitting the button to pay in Kiwi not pounds sterling. Boom the transaction has gone through; and we are $90+ worse off. We have been using our One Smart card for these sort of transaction and had firmed up a good exchange rate which had since dropped. So by paying with Kiwi, we were significantly worse off. To make matters worse, Kris did not have sufficient Kiwi dollars to pay so OneSmart appropriately took the funds from other currencies on the card incurring further losses in exchange rates and conversion fees. Do you think the young lass understood what she had just done???  Nope. She just couldn’t see that what she had done was wrong. Steam was seen coming out of two sets of ears. They could reverse the transaction but that would take 2-3 days for the funds to reappear in our account. Grump.

Next we find that we have a basement room, below street level. The saving grace is that the room is huge and, as we really don’t intend to spend too much time in the room, we think it will work out.

First step is to go out for a recce walk to find our nearest Tube station where we expertly purchase our Oyster cards for London transport.  There is a max limit to pay per day so once you have cracked up three trips you travel for free.

We have also done a recce on the local food outlets and have found a wee Malaysian on Craven Road that the bill. We must have picked right as it is chock full of local Malays dining. The food was very yummy and very cheap by London standards. The bill was possible low as they didn’t serve alcohol and John had to make to with COKE!!

Anyway, we are in London so let’ see what we can get up to….