Transit: LHR - NAI

We arrive in London an hour ahead of schedule, which is great for me, but has a number of other passengers grumbling. It doesn’t really do that much good as we end up in a super remote part of the airport and have to take a shuttle bus to the terminal.

Very happy to find a place to check in my bags so I can go into town without lugging them along. Jump on the Heathrow Express which takes 15 minutes into Paddington Station. Grab the Circle Line down to Embankment and get off. Find a health food store and get some yeast pâté and crackers. Mmm…Delicious.

Yeast…it’s what’s for lunch.

I set out on foot for Covent Garden. My destination is the Magma bookstore. I have been warned by Robotkid that I need to watch my wallet here. I manage to keep it very low key and walk away with only a DVD. I go on to find the other bookstores that I visited last in 1998, Ian Shippley and Zwemmer. They turn out to be right around the corner and to have merged together. I end up with some design theory books that Maina has inquired about but didn’t have time to look for at home.

My next destination is the London Grahpics Centre. I am looking for some pens, but spend a while browsing around the entire store. I have yet to shake my love for art supplies. Several traveling watercolor sets call to me, but I don’t realistically think I will use them right away. Need to get my drawing skills tuned up a bit before diving back into painting. All in due time.

I run a few more errands and get in a little sightseeing.

Look it’s Big Ben…and somewhere up at the top of the pillar is a statue of Trafalgar.

Back to the airport to start the next leg of the journey. I run into some trouble at the check-in counter. My carry-on is in excess of 25Kg with the weight limit being 10Kg. I have to quickly reshuffle a bunch of the more mission critical items into a smaller bag and send the rest of it off to be checked-in. I don’t have high hopes for seeing all of it at the other end. In July, Chantal had her bags riffled though in Nairobi and one of her cameras taken.

I get an aisle seat at the back of the plane…maybe some justice from the check-in clerk who I inconvienienced. One spot in the flying sardine can is as good as any other, so I don’t care. Most of my fellow passengers are the normal mix of folks you see going to Africa, with the notable exception of the five burly men sporting baseball caps with Jesus emblazoned on the back. The front on their hats read “People need the Lord.” They turn out to be from Orange Country (who would have guessed…) on their way to Dar es Salaam for some missionary work.

I watch most of “The Core” while I am eating dinner. Some time toward the end of the film, the feed goes dead as it does for all the other channels with the exception of the Bollywood Musical that my Indian seatmates are enjoying. Manage to get to sleep soon thereafter.