First day
Thursday, July 19th, 2001Hi
Well, we’ve just come to the end of our first day in London and everything seems to be working out relatively well so far. The flight was fair although I would not recommend SAA’s in-flight TV service or food in a hurry. This morning I wasn’t feeling too good at all and Kris, I thought that I had definitely come down with your ‘flu but that seems to have passed now. The passage through Heathrow was a doddle – no tough questions or anything – and we were out by 07h45 UK time.
(Aside: Good advice to any SA citizen travelling to the UK for more than 6 months is to have your chest x-ray in your hand luggage not your suitcase… or to have a handy UK citizen available to run down to the baggage carousel and fish it out for you.)
Having successfully managed to get SAA to let us go on 24kg overweight (64kg in total) we then had to make a plan with getting it around. The Heathrow Express train to Paddington was the obvious choice but we were less than pleased to find that the trolleys are barred from the actual platform. Needless to say our 2 suitcases, 2 PC boxes, 2 carry bags, 1 satchel and a document bag were not able to be conveyed in a single trip – not even with 2 people. Fortunately the trolleys were right on hand on the Paddington side.
Gordon and Csilla here at Lee Abbey have been fantastic. After a warm welcome, they left us their flat so that we could shower and catch a nap until lunch time (our room wasn’t available until after lunch)… just what the doctor ordered. Then followed lunch, which at Lee Abbey is only for staff, but they took us down as their guests. Later in the afternoon we needed to get something off my PC and Gordon provided us with a monitor (which he’s donating to us it seems)… Honestly, I never believed I’d have my PC up and running on the first day – it has all worked out exceptionally well.
It’s just starting to get dark here – it’s going on 21h20 – and we’ve just returned from the huge 24h Tesco’s up the road. The air outside is quite pleasant – crisp enough to condense your breath. Anyway we’re thinking about bed now so I’m going to sign off.
Love to everyone,
Julie & Tom
