Driving on the Left Side of the Street and Other Misadventures

My plane left Montreal yesterday with no further problems, and I can gladly say that I am now in London. We were supposed to arrive at 10:20, but due to the ash clouds the plane took a detour north of Iceland, which put us in London at, instead, 11:40.

I didn't mind this -- after all, I was finally in London, and a small delay was nothing compared to what had happened the night before. The problem was that, by the time I made it through customs and collected my bag, the train station was closed, meaning that I had no way of getting to Paddington Square, where I was supposed to meet Will. To make matters more difficult, my phone has absolutely no service here in the UK, and so getting a hold of Will was not that easy to begin with. As it happened, he had been waiting a few hours for me at Paddington Square, and his phone had died, so there was no way to get a hold of each other anyway.

So I waited it out in the airport at a lovely little 24-hour coffee shop (the coffee here is amazing), and then took a cab to Will's friend's place in southeast London, where I was finally able to get some sleep.

The cab ride was fun, though, especially when I remembered that, yes, the English do drive on the left side of the street. :)

The bit that I've seen of London so far, though, via cab ride, was amazing. It's not unlike many other big cities I've been in, but very, very large (much bigger than I had ever thought). The residential areas are charming, though, and I was reminded both of fairy-tale stories (because of the stones and wear from age) and industrial-era England (because of those rooftops -- you know what I mean). There's really no way to describe being someplace that you've waited to go for so long. I think I may have almost cried when I saw Westminster Abbey up close, the resting place of many people I admire, including Anne Boleyn.

Okay, time to go. Next stop, Oxford.