Did you know today was the annual celebration of the queen's birthday? Her actual birthday is April 21, but they have two celebrations.
My "single-serving friend" on the airplane told me that. He was nice. A lawyer from Atlanta with some children. I told him I was from Cincinnati and he said his best friend from Harvard Law lives in Cincinnati and teaches Math at Madeira High School. I swear I've heard more about Madeira in the past month than I have in my whole life. It's also weird how Cincinnati has all these connections.
The screen on my seat did not work. I could not watch movies nor interact with it whatsoever. That meant I couldn't turn it off. It would also start random games, so it looked like I was playing Bingo. I finally was able to get it to the flight tracker screen where it would just jump around the map constantly. I probably should have said something. But I didn't. I instead read Cat's Cradle. I probably should have done homework, but I didn't.
Apparently, there are complementary alcoholic beverages on these flights so I had 2 glasses of wine in hopes hat it would make me fall asleep. Unfortunately, the little girl behind us was as loud as she was adorable.
Anyways. The passport line took forever and my phone was dying so I sort of had to remember the directions to the AirBnB, but I wrote the stop names down on my laptop. I took the train from Heathrow toward Piccadilly station to get off at Green Park. Most of the Piccadilly line is above ground and was such a sunny day so everything looked gorgeous. The trains were extra crowded due to the queen's birthday. After Green Park, I took the Victoria line to Brixton. Which I then went out to take a bus. So this was my first place I "visited" in London. It was a cute little area.
I then took the bus #3 to a West Dulwich stop, but I guess if you keep going, you'll get to Crystal Palace. My airbnb host was really nice. He said he visited America last year and he went to Kansas. Kansas. He asked me if he should visit Cincinnati and I said I didn't know. Maybe if you like beer. The apartment is really awesome and has a David Lynch collection on blu-ray in case I really want to watch Lost Highway.
After my apartment orientation was done, it was 11:25 and I was exhausted. I decided that instead of going out immediately, to go out at 13:30 and take a 2 hour nap. I thought about going to the queen's birthday celebration, but I was exhausted.
I ended up packing up and leaving at around 14:00 walked to the West Dulwich station (which West Dulwich is super pretty) and went to Victoria station with the intention of walking to West Minster, but I didn't. I just walked down a few streets near Victoria and got lunch. I need more time in London. Hopefully I can find that on Monday and part of Tuesday.
I love the autonomy of nice public transportation.
I'm writing this from Heathrow again as I shortly fly to Scotland for another adventure in navigating my way to where I'm staying.
t's shockingly hot here this weekend. ~29 degrees C, ~85 degrees F. I've heard so many people complain (mostly locals)... I was hoping it'd be nice and cool here.
Until next time.