A busy first day

We had a busy day travelling downtown... here are a few shots from our day's walk to the Tower of London, London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Globe Theatre, the London Eye, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Whew!

The Chimes mall and Uxbridge tube station

Inexplicable British signs

Strange and amusing signs from around London...

Made it to London!

We arrived this morning at Heathrow after an uneventful flight! The trip was a bit of a milk run - a bus from Ottawa to the airport in Montreal, then a 7 hour flight from Montreal to Zurich, then another short flight to London. There was a little white dog on the first flight - it sat placidly on its owner's lap for the whole time... I wonder what would happen if it needed a bathroom break?



Keith's guitar survived the flight intact - although the case is a bit worse for wear. We took a short cab ride from the airport to the Red Lion Hotel in Uxbridge where we will be staying until Tuesday when we can move into the residence on campus. We arrived at the hotel very early - before 9am and so we couldn't check in to our room until later. We grabbed some breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then took a walk to Brunel's campus. It was strange to see the campus in person after looking at the website for so many months! It was also comforting to know that it actually *exists* though... We walked over to see our residence building. The campus is a mix of industrial 70s design (with similarities to Carleton) and new buildings from the last few years. The weather was dark, cool and windy while we sat on a bench looking at our new home. Truth be told it was a bit sad at that moment - thinking of everyone and everything we have left behind in Canada.


We walked back to the hotel and by that point thankfully there was a room available for us to collapse in. The time change is always very discombobulating! After a nap we felt more human and ready to tackle the next important task - finding dinner (or supper? or tea? we will have to get the new lingo down). The neighbourhood is very suburban, but it's English suburban so it's new to us! Everything is very small and tightly packed together - the cars are small, the lanes are narrow, the houses are tiny. I don't know if it's the jet lag or just poor spatial intelligence, but it's hard to remember which direction to look when crossing the street! Thankfully some of the crosswalks actually have an arrow painted on the ground that says "look right" or "look left". It's comforting to know that we are not the only people with this problem.


There are quite a lot of little restaurants nearby but because it's Sunday many were closed. After deciding against purchasing a packet of ox tongue lunch meat (although tempting) we found an M&S convenience store attached to a gas station and picked up some sandwiches and salads. Tomorrow I think we will try going downtown - even though it's a bank holiday there is still lots to see!