Lagging a little now....

Where were we.... So that was September 10 by the time we landed, competently flow on the second leg by captain Hazim Ramza. Having got off the Heathrow express train into town we killed a little time at Paddington (named after the famous bear that used to guard the king's carriage... honest) station with some terrible coffee and a croissant that looked even more mashed than our bags, while the morning rush on the tube died down. Stepping outside for my first English air it seemed slightly odd to see mostly normal looking people, given most of my travels are usually to places where people look distinctly local. Asians look like whatever their brand of Asian is, Americans look like Americans, but here people mostly look like people from back home... Albeit with a lot less of the Pacific and Chinese flavours. And probably slightly more trendy... Granted I haven't got out into the countryside yet though.

Braving the tube was a lot less daunting than it may have been without a pro guide at my disposal, and before I knew it I had an Oyster card like a real Londonian and I had somehow ended up at London Bridge station, the ride on the underground being far less traumatic than I had been led to expect. We dragged bags well laden with a precious cargo of NZ wine and Tim Tams through the London heat (?!!??) and ditched them at the office where we rented our London accom from, as we could not check in til 1500. Having worked up a good sweat (well ok that was just me) and not bathed for quite some time, we then set off for a look around...

Not too far away was Borough Market, a very cool little spot under train bridges (as are a lot of things here apparently) with awesome fish and food and produce and suchlike, which had me happily snapping away on the camera for a good while...

                                                                       

                                                               

                                 

From there we continued on in our (my) somewhat embarrassingly smelly and dishevelled state down to the Thames where we met up with one of our local hosts and some other visiting friends and embarked on an impromptu walking tour of the south bank, in an amazingly short space of time taking in such wonders as the Tate Modern (just the outside so far), Shakespeare's Globe, various government buildings, Downing Street, Big Ben and bunches of other famous spots, such as - 

And 

And

And bunches more. It was in fact somewhat surreal seeing so many iconic places and objects all in such close proximity to each other. As I commented that evening, having grown up with so much exposure in history books and on tv and in movies to this city, perhaps the most famous and enduringly significant city in the world, and having seen so many depictions of it from the lavish royal events to the 'gritty English crime drama' to news reports to the standard appalling UK soap opera, it was actually hard to know what to expect, or what aspects you would encounter. 

On first impressions the thing that most stood out was the almost overwhelming sense of history attached to everything. Like nowhere else, even the most mundane of old buildings seems to hold sealed in its bricks and mortar some sort of fascinating story of what was there before it, of the people who made it, of the things it has been used for, of the lives that drifted in and out its doors. It's hard to explain without waxing excessively lyrical, but I guess to me it comes down to the simple fact that so much of what has made the world as it is today has stemmed from this one place.

Once the walking was done and our home for the next few days was ready, our very, very long day ended after a blessed shower and a drink down by the river. Notwithstanding the few hours of sleep grabbed fitfully in the plane I would guesstimate about 48 hours between waking up in Auckland to getting to sleep in London, so not a bad effort all in all for 'Day One'. Plenty more to come.