Usually L brings her little alarm clock with us when we travel, but for some reason, this time we forgot it. Luckily, my WorldWatch has an alarm feature and even though I didn’t have the manual, I empirically figured out how to set it for 7:30 am which seemed most likely to be useful. So we woke this morning to the bleeping of my watch. We found a table at breakfast – no sign of M, we must have beaten him to it. He showed up eventually, and as we ate breakfast – same deal as yesterday – we discussed the plan for the day. We intended to walk around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and see where we ended up.

According to the weather report, it was supposed to be a nice day, but as we stepped outside on to George’s Drive there was a chill in the air and it was overcast. Near Elizabeth Street Bridge, a young man asked me directions to Victoria Coach Station. I thought he was referring to the Victoria Railway Station and proudly gave him directions that basically retraced our steps from the station the previous evening after the bus had come to the end of the line. He seemed a little unsure but walked off in the direction I’d pointed.

As soon as we’d crossed over Elizabeth Bridge I saw a big building with a sign, “Victoria Coach Station”. Oh dear. Well, that’s what you get for asking a tourist for directions. A little further down Elizabeth Street there were all these houses that had ground floors that really started below the level of the street. You had to walk down stairs to get to the front door. Several of them had very interesting plants growing up their front walls. I kept stopping to take pictures.

It was dark when we left the theatre, and traffic was busy. I consulted the map, and determined that we could walk to Holborn Tube station by following Shaftesbury Ave to High Holborn. On the way we found a nice restaurant that would serve us just dessert and coffee, because although it was dinner time, we were still fairly comfortably full from lunch. The coffee – it was Illy again – was fine.

We met up with our guide at the tube station, and to our disappointment, it seemed that the regular guide, Brian, was “doing something else” and we would have an alternate guide, a woman whose name eludes me, but whom I shall call “Ethel”. She waited until 7:10 pm and people continued to show up and add themselves to the group. It got so big that we really had to move because we were collectively taking up too much of the footpath, and every few minutes a stream of commuters would storm up the steps of the tube station and expect to be able to make their way down the street.

Ethel started off down Kingsway, holding her London Walks pamphlet high in the air so that we didn’t lose sight of her, turning left into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here she stopped, and started talking about Charles Dickens. After a while it became clear that Ethel knew a great deal about Charles Dickens. She may or may not have known a lot of things about Bloomsbury authors as well, but we didn’t get to hear much about them, unless it was whom was sleeping with whom, or who else was related to some other person. Charles Dickens aparently had the run of the place because if he once stopped to tie a shoelace on a particular street corner, then we heard all about it from Ethel.

The first pub we stopped at was, I think, the Rugby Tavern because it was all about the game and apparently was situated on land owned by the Rugby College or something like that. I don’t remember the details. If you ever get the chance to go there, and you’re male, then do mind the step in the Men’s Loos because even though there is a sign that says, ‘Mind the Step’, it still took me by surprise.

Like most pubs during the evening, it was full of people and cigarette smoke, so L and I went outside to enjoy the fireworks that were going off a couple of blocks away. After a bit the whole group came out and Ethel tried to make another speech about something or another but the fireworks kept drowning her out. Most unfortunate.

There was some more walking, and some more listening to Ethel about Dickens, then another pub. At this point, L, M, and I decided to bail on the Old Bloomsbury walk because it was getting a bit tedious and we weren’t really learning anything. And it was cold, and we didn’t really enjoy pubs that much! So we navigated our way back to Holborn and caught a bus back to Victoria Railway station, then walked the rest of the way back to the Airport Hotel, and retired for the night.

We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast to find M waiting for us, having picked out a table and eaten breakfast already. At the Airways Hotel you can decide whether to have the “continental” or “full english” breakfast. I chose the full english, which consisted of poached egg, toast, sausage, and baked beans. I think M was hoping for fried black pudding. He didn’t get it.

The plan for the day was to walk up to Oxford Street and do some shopping, hopefully ending up at the meeting point for the Old Bloomsbury Walk at the entrance to the Holborn Tube station. Specifically I wanted to hit the bookshops and see if I could find some John Wyndham, whose novels for some reason are not in print in the US. We set off the same way as the day before, up Buckingham Palace Road. Unlike yesterday, though, the sun was out and we walked through the gate and up to the Queen Victoria Memorial. We got a good view of the palace.

Something was going on, because there were helicopters and people in hats and other finery arriving, and police officers were checking over each car to go through the gates. They ignored all the tourists such as ourselves milling about, though. Of course, we couldn’t go through the gates but we could stick our cameras through the bars and take pictures of the palace guards.

As it was such a nice day, we walked through St James’s Park, watching the birds on the lake. So many different kinds of ducks. And squirrels! There was one old guy who appeared to be permanently bonded to the park bench feeding them peanuts. “Here Suzy! Come on, Suzy!” he’d say, and the squirrel (who may or may not have been Suzy, because there were at least two of them taking advantage of the situation) would run up and take the peanut, climbing over the chap’s head if necessary. He was attracting quite a crowd. L and I made up stories about him as we continued walking.

Past the Old Admiralty buildings, through the Admiralty Arch, and then there was Nelson on top of his column. (I say this like he’s familiar icon, which he is, but somehow I think this is a feeling that I’m not entitled to. I seem to have a built-in affection and recognition for “old country icons” that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with.) Trafalgar Square seemed smaller than I expected. And I didn’t expect the view of Westminster all laid out to the South. We’re climbing a hill!

We walked up Charing Cross Road towards Oxford Street. I distinctly remember seeing a Pizza Hut. I mention this because that is apparently 84 Charing Cross Road, or so I read on the Internet. We found several bookshops, one of which had a copy of The Chrysalids to sell me. We also found a comics store, which also had stuff to sell me, but I resisted the temptation. (It wasn’t like the things I wanted there were unobtainable in the ‘States.)

Suddenly we were at Shaftesbury Avenue, in front of the Palace Theatre. L had the brilliant idea of getting matinee tickets. “But we have no idea what is showing!” I protested.

“It’s The Woman in White,” said M, practically. I’d never heard of it.

“Who cares what’s showing!” replied L. “It’s the Palace Theatre! Where people got to see The Mikado for the first time ever! It’s history. Let’s do it!”

We walked around the corner to the box office and found that we could indeed get tickets for the 2:00 pm show. It seems that “The Woman In White” is the most recent Andrew Lloyd Webber production and it has been getting very good reviews as “a return to form”.

We had an hour or so before we need to be back at the theatre, so we had lunch in a pub – fish and chips in my case, along with some very fine local ale, the name of which I never bothered to write down so I don’t even know why I’m mentioning it.

We did make it up to Oxford Street, where we found a Virgin Megastore. It was a good one, too. They had a great science-fiction DVD section upstairs. We found a DVD copy of Firefly as a present for M, in region 2. They had other wonderful BBC sci-fi stuff on DVD as well: The Tomorrow People, Timeslip, even Quatermass. Unfortunately they were all Region 2. Perhaps that is just as well – I would have bought them all to bring back if they were Region 0!

Then we walked back to the theatre, where people were already lining up to take their seats. Seemed quite crowded. (I found out later that the show opened on September 14 this year, and is getting such good reviews, that in hindsight I’m surprised we got in so easily. Midweek matinee, cheap seats, I guess.)

It was very exciting to walk up the stairs to the not-quite-very-top and take our seats on what felt like a 50-degree slope. No problem with visibility as far as other people go, but there were some railings that we had to look through. The upper balconies are decorated with little cherubs, each with their own source of illumination. They almost seemed like little fireflies hovering around the stage.

Speaking of the stage – initially all we could see was some huge round panels with clouds projected on them. We had no clue how the actors were going to deal with them. I almost don’t want to describe what happens in the show because it was so cool… but I guess it isn’t giving anything away to say that the stage sets are completely virtual, computer-generated, and projected on to the curved panels – and that the panels move around, quickly and silently, for each scene. It worked brilliantly.

I am not familiar with any of the actors except Michael Crawford, who played one of the major supporting characters, but basically stole the show every time he came on. Superb. I would actually go and see it again if I could, and I am not a fan of musicals, generally.

(I have to say, that Lloyd-Webber sure can fashion a pretty tune when he wants to. I thought he must have been in a bit of a slump, because no melody of his has ever stuck in my head since Phantom of the Opera (which was some time ago – ’86?) but the music was really good, and melodies from it have been popping into my brain many weeks later. In some cases driving me batty because I couldn’t remember where the melody was from. Eventually I sang the tune to L and she said, “It’s from Woman in White and it’s been bothering me too”.)

The nice man at the Airways Hotel reception desk explained that our room wouldn’t be ready until midday, but we could leave our bags under their care and walk about the Pimlico district, or go downstairs and sit in the lounge where supposedly there was Internet access. We had arranged to meet M at the hotel at some point during the day, but as he was driving up from Southampton, we really didn’t expect him for several hours yet. So a walk outside seemed like a good idea. We collected some tourist pamphlets from the stand in the lobby and went outside. The air was brisk, but not too cold. We stopped for a photo-opportunity in front of some real London phone booths. No sign of the TARDIS.

We walked up Warwick Way towards Belgrave Road and saw a Cafe Nero on the corner. They used a font for their signage that really made it look like “Cafe Nerd”. Considering that they offered WiFi Internet for laptop users, it seemed more appropriate. Of course we had to stop and have Real Coffee for breakfast. To my delight they also offered a real Almond Croissant. Another no-brainer.

The brand of coffee was Illy which doesn’t rock my world usually, but it was a heck of a lot better than anything else I’d tasted in the last 24 hours.

It was so much fun just to walk around the streets, drinking in the atmosphere. Yeah, sounds corny, but I was feeling it. We ended up walking up Rochester Row, and seeing signs that said we were in Westminster. We walked back by a slightly different route, and I looked around for where the cathedral might be, but apart from the odd glimpse of the bell tower, no sign. And no, I wasn’t confusing it with the Abbey.

M still hadn’t shown up when we got back to the Airways hotel, so we trudged downstairs to the Internet lounge and tried to get our laptops to recognise the WiFi LAN. No luck. We sort of connected to a network, but couldn’t get a valid DNS server or indeed, get any pings to successfully hit the Internet. L used the webmail interface on the one lone PC in the corner that could browse the web, and checked her email. I dozed off in a chair.

Sometime later, L went upstairs and found that M had arrived a little while ago, settled into his room, and what’s more, our room was also ready. We were very excited to see him again, and he looked great too.

We didn’t have any firm plans for our few days in London, just to see as much as possible without getting involved in anything too complicated and touristy. We knew in advance that we would be centrally based, and within walking distance of a lot of stuff, but we had no firm plans. We decided just to go out and see where we ended up, and get some lunch on the way. One thing we knew we wanted: Lunch in a traditional pub.

We checked out a number of places as we walked North-West along Wilton Road, but at this time of day they all seemed very full, both of people and cigarette smoke. Yeah, people are going to smoke in a pub. Doesn’t seem so quaint and attractive now, does it? We found ourselves at the top end of Victoria Railway Station, and a pub called “Duke” something looked relatively empty and free of airborne contaminants. We found a table and M and I ordered sandwiches and beer at the bar, then went back to consult the maps and plan out the next few days.

One of the pamphlets L had was about the Original London Walks that take place on a regular schedule. The guide basically shows up at the pre-arranged time and place and for 5£ he or she will show you around various interesting places and talk about them. Interesting names like, “Ghosts, Gaslights, and Guiness”, or “Jack The Ripper Haunts”. One of the Wednesday night ones was the “Old Bloomsbury” or Literary London Pub Walk. I wouldn’t know a Bloomsbury author if they all came up to me and introduced themselves, but L would, and there’s nothing wrong with checking out some pubs. We settled on doing the walk tomorrow, after walking up to Oxford Street and doing some shopping; Thursday we would check out Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and some museums. For the rest of the day, we would walk around Westminster.

We set of up Buckingham Palace Road, map in hand. L and M kept teasing me about the map, but in my defense I would like to say that I always knew where we were and we never got lost. A funny side-effect of getting the map out is that other tourists would ask me for directions. I didn’t figure out why they were choosing to ask me until much later.

It was a grey, overcast day. It would have been stereotypical if it were drizzling rain, but fortunately that didn’t happen. We walked past Buckingham Palace, then turned right and ambled alongside St James’s Park down Birdcage Walk. Why is it called Birdcage Walk? I still have no idea. The trees in the park were mostly feeling the Autumn, with some lovely combinations of colors, like a Monet painting.

Pretty soon I gave in to the tourist urge and just started taking pictures of everything, including a window in the Guard’s Museum which was full of painted lead toy soldiers. Despite the many signs indicating that the Museum was open and willing, we continued walking down towards the Thames. The footpath was covered in yellow-brown maple leaves. At least, they looked like maple leaves.

At the end of the street, we encountered a sign that said, “Storey’s Road” and “Westminster Abbey”. On an urge I suggested to the others that we followed the sign and checked out the Abbey. The buildings were tall on either side of the narrow street, but after a bit it opened up into a courtyard, and there, across the road (Victoria Street) was Westminster Abbey in all its glory. Now, apart from all the weddings and funerals and what-not on TV, most of what I know about the Abbey comes from a 60’s science-fiction tale called “Quatermass” in which a returned astronaut (who is really a conglomerate of three astronauts plus a space fungus) retreats into the Abbey in order to escape being captured. The climax of the tale involves the authorities being unable to take much action against the alien for fear of damaging the building. For some reason I felt a bit reticent to actually go on a tour of the interior of the Abby, but L and M convinced me that it would be stupid not to. So we retraced our steps a little and paid our 7£ each and made our way into the building. I was glad the others had convinced me – it really is something. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, which was a shame because there is so much to see and try and remember. On the other hand, it would have felt kind of disrespectful. Lots of crypts, tombs, fiddly bits and things I don’t even know the name of.

For a long time my grandmother had a couple of wax rubbing hanging on her wall. She and Grandpa brought them back from a trip to England many years ago. They made them themselves from bas-reliefs in a number of places, one of which was Westminster Abbey. Perhaps it is unlikely, but I remember the image of the robed woman and believe I saw the original bas-relief where Grandma did the wax rubbing. I have no idea which of my family has the wall hangings now but if I get a chance I would like to see it again.

It was getting dark by the time we left the Abbey, but the time was well-spent. Across the square – Crown Court I think – we could see the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben. Some sort of demonstration was going on. As we got closer we could see that it was just one guy with a whole lot of placards decrying the involvement in the Iraq war. “Stop killing our kids” said one. “Peace” said another. “Baby killers!” proclaimed another. It was just one guy sitting there with his megaphone. But he had a lot to say.

We walked around and through the crowds of people, most of them trying to get home after the day’s work, by the look of them, and headed out on to Westminster Bridge to take a look at the Thames river. Light was fading rapidly, but we did out best to take pictures of the London Eye, and Parliament Buildings all lit up. It was getting cold.

We decided not to cross the river and try to ride on the ‘Eye. Instead we walked briskly back down Victoria Street, past Westminster Cathedral, all lit up and looking very impressive. Back down Wilton Road and back to the hotel, where we refreshed ourselves before venturing out again in search of dinner. Originally we were thinking pub grub again, but good sense prevailed and we ended up at the Spicy World Balti House for really good Indian food. This was one of the things we wanted to do while in London – enjoy a good curry. Cross another thing off the list.

We touched down at Gatwick at 6:00 am and I felt like crap. Not even dialing up “LONDON” on my WorldWatch (alas, no longer available) and seeing the local time, date, sunrise and sunset times blip into place could cheer me up. Still – we were in England! For the first time, in my case. It was very dark outside, I could see nothing interesting except the terminal lights.

We disembarked from the jet and trekked through the terminal towards immigration, baggage claim, customs, all without incident. The foreign exchange desk didn’t take traveller’s cheques, so we changed a little of our American cash into UK pounds and bought a couple of tickets on the Gatwick Express to Victoria train station with a credit card.

The Gatwick Express runs every 30 minutes and it was a bit of a trek to get to station at the Gatwick end of the line. We emerged from the escalator just 30 seconds too late to catch the 6:45 am train so it was a chilly wait for the next one – fortunately no-one was smoking in the enclosure on the platform so we sat there for 15 minutes until the right train pulled up and after some dithering about whether this was the right train, we hopped on and found a seat.

Pretty soon it filled up with people and then pulled away from the station. I guess we were heading North towards London but I couldn’t really tell. I rested my head against the window and watched the parallel lines of the rails of the adjacent track until I felt sick. When was the last time I was on a train? Flashbacks to high school times and scooting around the Hutt Valley. Actually the last time was probably the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad on our Ohio trip but in many ways that didn’t feel like a regular commuter-type train.

I watched the station names go by, familiar from books. Suddenly Battersea Power Station loomed up and I felt the urge to take a picture. Radiate cold shafts of broken glass… Feeling the blank stares of other passengers in the carriage, I said out loud to no-one in particular, “Closest I’ve ever been to a Pink Floyd album cover…” Except that time I set myself on fire, I thought. No, better not say that out loud.

And then the train pulled up on platform 13 at Victoria station. It seemed enormous and we got lost immediately. Which level were we on? Where did we need to be? How do we get to our bed & breakfast? We found an escalator and came out at one exit where we could have just found a taxi, but I knew that we were only 5 minutes walking distance from the Airways Hotel, (according to their web site). All the websites we’d checked out said that taxis in London are expensive. I’d prepared for this part of the journey by printed out a PDF facilities map of the station, and also an aerial screen shot of the district from Keyhole Earthviewer, which has pretty good coverage of the center of London. So I knew that if we could find the Hudson’s Place exit from the station, we’d be able to walk the couple of blocks required. We were pretty tired but I knew I could handle the bags if L could handle the walking.

We walked around and went back down into the mall area and took a good look at the layout map. Then we located some more escalators leading back down to the platform area and walked right around the interior of the station at platform level towards where I thought the right exit was.

Hudson’s place was not on any of my maps but I knew where we had to be. So we trudged off in the right direction, looking for St George’s Drive. The locals were very friendly and would notice that we were clutching maps and looking around, and would come up to us to see if we needed directions. After walking around Eccleston Square, suddenly there was St George’s Drive and then we were walking up the steps and into the building.

The first day of our Great European Tour started quietly enough, probably due to the fact that we’d dropped the cats off at their hotel on Saturday. Consequently, they weren’t around to jump on our heads at 6:00 am and scream for breakfast. No sleeping in, though – L had set the alarm for 5:30 am given that we were going to have to pack up the house and get ourselves to the airport in time for a 9:10 am international flight. No-one got breakfast.

For a book to read on the plane I dithered between Stephenson’s Quicksilver and Niven/Pournelle’s Burning City. Burning City won out, mainly because it was more compact and not as heavy.

McCarran airport seems to reconfigure its parking building every few weeks just to keep us on our toes. We found long-term parking eventually and left our car with a view of the ‘Strip, which was looking pretty good in the light of the rising sun.

The whole airport security experience gets more sucky every time I go through it.

The first leg of our journey took us to Atlanta in order to switch planes. I have no memory of the flight; I think I slept through it. Pretzels and Coffee and other food if we wanted to pay for it. No thanks, I’ll eat airline food if it is free but actually paying for it is not going to happen.

The terminal at Atlanta is a series of six parallel buildings with gates on each side, connected down the middle by an underground train. Typically, we arrived at T8 and had to get ourselves to E30, or something like that, which was about as far a distance it is possible to travel and still be in the terminal. We had about 90 minutes before the connecting flight at 5:40 pm but it felt like barely enough.

Our jet was a Boeing 777 which has individual video screens for each seat, mounted in the back of the seat in front. Cool! Our seat-mate was an IT manager from Australia who had been canoeing down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Good bulkhead seats, they even reclined.

The in-flight entertainment was pretty slick. About 8 channels of differing video options that just loop continuously, and each of us could decide which channel to watch at any time. I tried to sleep for most of the flight, but ended up watching I, Robot, and Two Brothers, and some other film that perhaps I did sleep through because I don’t remember it at all.

My Mum and Dad hit some milestone numbers this year, and are having a joint birthday party tomorrow back in the home country. Right now I’m supposed to be writing a speech to be delivered by proxy by my best friend. I’ve got it mostly done but if I don’t finish it tonight I’m screwed… Paul will just have to make it up. (just kidding).

We’re back from the Advisor/Microsoft Visual FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon for short) that this year was held at the JW Marriot in Summerlin. Our sessions went well, I think, despite the fact that for the first of our sessions we had to get up at 6:00 am and drive to the hotel for our 8:00 am start time. Still, it’s great to see the work we’ve been doing over the last year and a half going over with the attendees. It could so easily have been 75 minutes of blank stares. I think they got it, I think that they get the idea that this is deep stuff and will take some time to absorb and leverage.

Next stop, Frankfurt, where Lisa and I will be doing four sessions instead of two, covering more material between the two of us.

Congratulations, Scaled Composites! There will be cynics, but in my opinion this is as important a step as Armstrong’s first step. May there be many more breakthroughs and milestones falling by the wayside.

In the meantime, I’m in bed with a sore back and a head cold.