{"id":874,"date":"2015-05-02T12:56:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T17:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/?p=874"},"modified":"2016-05-02T13:36:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T18:36:45","slug":"tubes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/?p=874","title":{"rendered":"Tubes!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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So, the plane last night didn’t take off until almost two hours late. We made up some time in flight, though, and landed only about an hour late. I had managed to sleep through most of the trip – about five and a half hours. Because I was able to sleep, but not for as long as I wanted, I’m tired today, but not exhausted.<\/p>\n

I took full advantage the British Air arrivals lounge1<\/a><\/sup> for their showers and free breakfast. I also got a sim card and set up my phone on the 3 network, and bought an Oyster Card for using the Underground.<\/p>\n

I’m really glad I took the tube to my hotel. It was long, and somewhat confusing, and tiring hauling my stuff around, but it really brought home the fact that I’m in a different city, in a different country, in a way that I think the faster trains or a cab wouldn’t have. It also showed me that, intimidating though the tube looks to a barbarian like me, it’s really not that difficult to navigate.<\/p>\n

I made it to Liverpool Street, my first destination, because there’s a Lush shop there. I picked up my special soap and cream, and then found a pharmacy, where I bought some toiletries, ibuprofen, and travel sickness pills2<\/a><\/sup>. I also got my first chance to stick my head into the actual outside in London. I snapped a couple of pictures, but the photo software on this computer isn’t working right. I’m still going to post them, but once I get things straightened out, I’ll probably come back and update them.<\/p>\n

**Edit** I got my picture editor working on my computer, so I have updated the pictures.<\/p>\n

\"So,<\/a>
So, this is a look at the London skyline from within London. It’s taken just outside of Liverpool Street, which is a train and underground station. Also, a mall. You can just see the tip of the Gherkin peeking over the older building in the foreground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"This<\/a>
This statue is out one of the Liverpool Street Station entries. It’s called the Kindertransport Memorial, and shows children being shipped away from London during the second World War.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then, it was back on the tube, out to Barking. From the Barking station, I walked to my hotel, navigating via Apple Maps on my phone3<\/a><\/sup>. I wound up in the parking lot of a huge Tesco superstore, and decided to give up but, after buying and drinking a very lovely bottle of Fanta4<\/a><\/sup>, I was refreshed and found where I had gone wrong reading the map.<\/p>\n

So, I made it to my hotel around 5:00, and right at the desk they had a deal for pizza and coke, which I ordered and ate. Now, I’m going to rest up for tomorrow, watch a movie or something, and try to stay awake until 10:00 or so, so that I don’t wake up too early.<\/p>\n

I made it!<\/p>\n

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  1. Okay. I knew Heathrow was very, very big, but they have a high-speed transit train to move people from the arrival gates to the actual Arrivals area\u00a0within the same terminal<\/em>. That’s big. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  2. I found in Ireland that some of the tours – especially the rural ones – made me a little nauseous. Not gonna give in to that. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  3. This is why I get the new sim card first thing. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  4. For North American readers: Fanta in Europe is awesome. No, really. For European readers: Fanta in North America is made of fail and sadness. No, really. [↩<\/a>]<\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So, the plane last night didn’t take off until almost two hours late. We made up some time in flight, though, and landed only about an hour late. I had managed to sleep through most of the trip – about five and a half hours. Because I was able to sleep, but not for as … Continue reading “Tubes!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[173,181,186],"tags":[188,189,22,187,23],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-england-scotland-2015","category-london","category-travel-england-scotland-2015","tag-barking","tag-british-airways","tag-heathrow","tag-liverpool-street","tag-london"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s8tF5A-tubes","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}