London, Day One

Oxford Street near Marble Arch

28 November 2013

Good Ol' Blighty.  An hour in the passport control line at Heathrow is de rigeur.  As we sat in the taxi after the train ride to Paddington station, I looked out upon the late afternoon chaos:  storefronts spilling their wares out onto crowded sidewalks; shop signs in English, Arabic; clothing, food, hardware, holiday ware, mobile phones, mobile phones unlocked; holiday lights strewn overhead across the streets; cars, buses, taxis, pedestrians.

What a lovely mess London is!

The first order of business was getting our mobile phones sorted.  Rather than discard our old iPhones, we turned them into UK phones last year.  We both upgraded this year, so we wanted to take the most recent old phones and make them our UK phones.  This involved each of us carrying three iPhones (our US phones, should the switcheroo go wrong; our recently unlocked iPhones; and our old, slow, can't-hold-a-charge UK iPhones).  We got things worked out rather quickly, and each added 10 pounds on our UK phone accounts.  Half an hour later, back in the hotel room, Jack discovered that his entire balance was gone.  While we'd been walking home, his now-UK phone updated all of its apps, using cell data to do so, down to the last pence.  He'd forgotten to turn the auto-update feature off when he'd turned on the phone.  We figured we'd find a place to top up his account after dinner.

On Oxford Street is Selfridges, the poor man's Harrod's.  They do up their windows to rival Harrod's and Macy's.  People gathered in semicircles to take pictures.  There was only one that really caught my eye:

Play-Doh.

Jack said he'd have to come back to this wine shop (read the name out loud a few times):

After dinner (a tasty curry, because there is no bad Indian food in London) we went to the nearest cornershop so that Jack could top up.  While he did that I wandered the isles looking for dessert.

One thing about the British:  they're serious about their sweets and their biscuits.  They don't mess around.  At least half of the store was dedicated to chocolates, candies, and cookies.  Jack figured that a third of the place was given over to liquor.

It was with some restraint that I chose a representative sample from the shelves.  I do like blackcurrant, which you can't get in the States.  We'll be nursing the Digestives until they're stale.  The Eclairs are too chewy to wolf down, so they should last a while too.  The Ribena's gone.

So here we are, back in the hotel, catching up with the doings of all y'all back home, on Thanksgiving over there and Thursday over here.  If what's going on at Sean and Dale's house is any indication (I'd post the pictures, but...) you guys are having a good time.

P.S.  Geneva was a dud in the nightmare-scary-tacky Christmas ornament department, but London is looking promising.