London Day 1

Cathay Pacific pilots must be trying hard to earn a gold start for fast flying: despite a short delay of 20 minutes on takeoff, we arrived London Heathrow 3 10 minutes for an early landing.

For me: welcome to chaos. I've got an annoying trait that wants to have a map and know where I'm going, and to stay connected or have a connection to ensure I won't get lost. This translates to arriving, finding a map, and finding a new SIM card. Long story short: we spent the next 2 hours at the Airport relaxing, settling, trying to look for non-existant free WiFi. Not completely true: it does exist for 30mins, but requires signing up for some account or another - something that gives me concern. Also, the possibility of having to pay extra is worrisome.

By the by, we dived down to the London Underground rail system from Heathrow 3. For all London travellers: definitely get yourself an Oyster card if you're travelling for more than two days. It's a £5 deposit (A$12.50), plus extra to prepay your fare. For those who have doubts, you WILL be able to get a refund before you depart - just stop over at any Underground station to get a cash refund for your £5 deposit and any remaining balance. Also: it's cheaper than having to buy individual tickets for both bus and trains - there's a £2 surcharge for buying individual paper tickets - so get the Oyster!
I can appreciate the convenience of this network, having grown up with the Hong Kong OCTOPUS system, and is similar to the Melbourne myki system: one always tags on and off for every journey you take.

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Got to Clapham Junction station without issues, but then left the station and walked in the wrong direction for about 10 minutes: so what should have been a 5 minute stroll took 25 minutes to complete. Getting to the Travelodge, the receptionist refused to let us leave our bags: so we had a 4 hour wait until 12.30pm before we could check in. What to do: the classic tourist's solution - find a Starbucks and camp there for free WiFi until things are ready!

During this time, I went off to look for a prepaid SIM card to abuse on our journey. Having done some research beforehands, I was keen too look at Orange UK for some data options, especially with Euro Zone roaming. What I found instead is that they had merged: EE is the new company formed from Orange and T-Mobile UK. Despite doing the research beforehands, talking to the sales guy helped much more: I got me a prepaid service that offers unlimited internet usage for £2.50 for 5 days: the length of our stay here in London. This plan also had a roaming data option too which I could use during the Continental parts of our holiday coming up... but roaming will always be roaming - ie very costly (£10/A$16 for 50MB).

Stay until 12pm, then finally checked in at Travelodge Clapham Junction. Newly opened for less than two months, our Family room was rather basic and fresh: just the way we want it - one queen-sized bed, and a sofa with a pull-out roller - enough to comfortably sleep 4 people.

Relaxed, showered and unwound: we hadn't had any time or space to ourselves since leaving Sydney exactly 48 hours earlier.

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The afternoon came around: time for a bit of light exploration. Now I had planned to visit my extended family here in London, thinking of having dinner at his end of town. However, plans changed whilst en route to Walthamstow (how on earth does one pronounce that name!?). So we had a bit more free time on our hands, so we took a detour and swapped train lines to explore a few attractions.

Exiting at Waterloo station, we admired the night sky and twinkly lights as walked over London Bridge and also seeing Tower Bridge from a distance. Not as appreciated was the acutely felt effects of the night chill: air temperature possibly 1-2 degrees above zero. Brrrr! We explored a bit of the alleyways and laneways around the station area, but mostly we were cold, tired and hungry, not in the serious mood for exploring.

That's it for our first day in London - dinner with my cousin was great, and we made it home in one piece, tired and keen for a hot shower and a warm bed for a good night's sleep.