Touchdown!

I'm here!

After a fantastically uneventful flight (landed five minutes late, everything on point), I found myself buying a train ticket from Gatwick into London via the Gatwick Express.

To avoid the morning commuters who would be slowing down the South line (£8) I took the Gatwick Express into town (£12) and found myself standing on the platform at Victoria station at 8:50 this morning.

Of course, I had made a hostel reservation for later in the day, so I decided to walk it, which, if I'd paid better attention to my map would have been a fine idea. As it was, I wound up in the wrong district, W8, when I should have been nosing about in W2.

Londoners are incredibly helpful about poor lost bastards like me, and sticking my head in a post office not only yielded a set of directions, but also meant that later, another person who had been in the post office when I'd asked for them asked after me on the street to see if I was getting on ok! So they are, officially now, the nicest people on earth, which is cool.

But, the downside is that they don't know any of the little streets in a district outside their own. Unlike New York, London has a billion tiny side streets sporting three buildings and eight parking spaces, and it is on such a side street that my hostel is located. So I found myself in W8 asking for directions to a tiny side street in W2 and everyone was forced to give me blank looks and directions to a different street because they didn't know where I was headed and I had no clue.

Once I sorted out that I was looking at the wrong part of my map, I headed for the correct district and found myself a few helpful post office and police personnel who aimed me in the right direction. So I spent about three hours finding a place that, in reality was only a thirty minute walk from the station, if not less. So now I'm going exploring for a bit, and I'll be back to update you all later.

I'll meet Adrienne tomorrow night and probably drag her back here to check her e-mail and update her folks as to the start of her travels. We'll see.