London 2

We decided another day in London would be needed to see anything like a decent sampling of a city that is overwhelmingly large and diverse. Although our hotel concierge made a couple of calls to his buddy around the corner who has a similar establishment, we needed to find somewhere to stay for the night. Tracked down an Internet cafe upstairs from Earls Court Rd, enquired about connecting by wireless. "No wireless" declared the young African lady guarding the entrance to this crowded little cyber space. "Cable?" I countered.
"OK. One pound an hour." And soon I was busily and increasingly anxiously viewing some very expensive hotel options, and was about to give in when I found one place just a few hundred metres away that was actually a fiver cheaper than where we had been staying.

The new place styles itself as an Edwardian hotel, which is probably the era in which it last had a refurbishment. It is part of a graceful row of high terraces and backs onto a charming old cobblestoned mews. And, several unsecured wireless access points declared themselves as I started up the laptop, making me feel like it won't be so hard to plan our next move tomorrow. On presenting our visages at reception, the on-line deposit I had paid by credit card had not even reached their system, which was down for the count.
Fortunately, although I had not been able to print the receipt, I had saved it on my laptop, so fired it up then and there and managed to convince them that I had a legitimate booking, albeit at a cheaper rate than they seemed to expect. Lesson: take stock, calm down, research the options, before taking a less than optimum choice.

Relieved at sorting out a room, in the early afternoon we headed off to check out the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe theatre, on the south bank of the Thames. This is really worth seeing, made from a thousand oak trees held together with wooden pegs, and with a roof made of Norfolk reeds that birds just don't like to sit on. Now as long as you could fashion a wig from that stuff the statues would not suffer as much from bird attack. The details of the theatre's construction , from the heavens to the area in front of the five foot high stage where the "groundlings" paid their penny to drink and carouse through the performance.

Further along, Tower Bridge and London Bridge came into view, the Tower surprisingly beautiful to look at despite its grim history. We kept our distance; the crown jewels remained intact, although I realised that my belt was fully undone and had been for a couple of hours since I had last heard the cry of nature. A long search for somewhere to eat that had some vego options ended with giving in to a fish restaurant tucked behind a cathedral and beside a steel roofed open market much like South Melbourne market in appearance. Food again badly cooked and expensive: 50p more than a room for the night. You can eat at modest price in London, but you will be living on sandwiches, prepacked and infested with the evil and omnipresent "salad cream". The cafes are run by non-English predominantly, but they have caved in to the demand for "chips wiv everything". Go to Tesco and get some fruit at least, the EU provides a good range of real food and the English just don't seem to get it.

Both of us now almost adjusted to being on the far side of the world, though Miriam very tired tonight after going for an early morning walk. I will stop now, as I think my keyboard pecking is stopping her from settling. Come to think of it, I might just join her. Tomorrow I may even manage to upload some pictures of the journey so far. Goodnight for now: in the land of Oz you are probably about ready to get up and start your day.