London

Monday morning I caught a cab to my hotel, the increasingly misnamed "Royal" Bayswater Hotel (on second thought, considering the state of the British Monarchy, maybe they're onto something after all). There was zilch, zero, nada and no flexibility or understanding for my pleadings of just maybe, possibly, please, for fuck's sake let me check in BEFORE noon IFFIN you have a bloody room ready. I glared at them through bloodshot eyes, but to no avail - their vacant stare was permanent and so beat mine. I lifted an arm and waved the smell in their direction, but their own garlic stench was permanent, so I lost that battle too. Fuckers.

Still, despite the cramped rooms and the noise in the hallways, the place is quite cheap, and it's central enough. Besides, I've taken a liking to the Queensway area. It's got two underground stations, so transportation is easy and cheap and there's lots of decent, but reasonably priced dining places in the area. There's even a multicinema complex to while away rainy days (who'd have thought that I'd become a mall rat in my 30s...?)

Another brilliant thing I discovered was that the shopping center with the theaters also sported a massage salon. Some of you may have heard about my time in Prague, where I got some "Thai massage" and afterwards felt like I'd paid good money to get beaten up by a five feet tall girl. This time it was a muscular six feet tall Eastern European guy, but the massage was a traditional back & shoulders kinda thing and really pleasant. Highly recommended!

Queensway also has tons of souvenir shops where you can buy all manner of useless crap. I bought the traditional "My brother went to London and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" and for his aussie girlfriend I bought one with a slightly less traditional "Some idiot went to London..." legend.

Random, useless and uninteresting pics:

Buckingham Palace:




The Victoria Monument outside the palace:




A monument to the Royal Marines:




Trafalgar Square, with the Nelson column:




A close up of the philandering bastard:




Charles 1st, of whom John Cleese said "The most interesting thing about King Charles I is that he was 5'10 at the beginning of his reign and only 4'9” at the end of it":




The controversial "Alison Lapper Pregnant" statue. My own caption: "When they told me rapid weight loss would cost me an arm and a leg, I didn't think they meant it literally".




Outside the National Gallery there's a statue of good ole George Washington:




I even was so artsy fartsy as to buy a ticket to their exhibition of Dutch portraits, and it was quite interesting. It's open until September 16, so if you're in London before then, go see it!