EUT 08 – London, Lets get it started.

Once we reached London we were in the flow. As the song goes we were runnin' runnin' and runnin' runnin' and completely in the zone. We had our day by day and hour by hour Excel sheet ready. We specially made that so that we would not have to spend time in figuring out the what, where and how about things to do next. After we landed in London Luton airport, the Excel told us to take the Greenline bus, the number, the fare, the place to buy tickets, the place to board it from and the place to get off. We reached Baker Street metro station and took the Bakerloo line to Paddington station. The excel gave us directions to our hotel from there and after circling the hotel a couple of times we finally realized that it was our hotel and checked in. The room was basic with a bed, bath, television and closet. The best thing was that it was on the Ground floor in a 4 storey hotel with no elevator. The staircase was about 3 feet wide and so to get our fat asses and suitcases up would have been a nightmare. The complimentary English breakfast was served down just one flight of stairs in the basement.

It was drizzling a little when we got out for a stroll after freshening up. The excel sheet told us we could either do Hyde park which was a 5-7 mins walking distance from the hotel or the Marble Arch which was a couple of stops by the Red Double Decker bus. We took the Hyde park option, but walked in the opposite direction of the Park. That was the disadvantage of getting too much in the 'Zone' I guess, occasionally it meant that we were like a couple of Asses just following the carrot (the excel in our case). Anyways, we realized that after we had walked for about 10 mins and decided that we were too exhausted and called it quits. We ate at a nice Malaysian Restaurant which had got 5 stars in the airlines restaurant review. It was worth it. The food was bellisimo.

The excel advised us to do East London that day. We followed all instructions word to word (with occasional common sense intervention) and did the Tower bridge, Tower of London, London Bridge, St. Paul's cathedral, Cleopatra's Needle, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. We stuck to the public buses and tubes for transport and it worked it a charm. Hats off to the public transport system of London. Even with a child and his belongings, which can be really bulky, we had no problem traveling around. But traveling with luggage and a child and his belongings...... now thats a different story. Anant's pumping metal for all these years came in real handy there. It came in handy and worked all of the times except for one. On the day we came from Inverness, we came by tube to Paddington. Now the Bakerloo line is in the depths of Underground hell. The first escalator was the longest, steepest and narrowest one. I took Aarnav by the hand and one backpack and climbed onto it. Anant managed to pull our 2 big suitcases one backpack and Aarnav's stroller on the escalator and our journey to the surface began. Not for long though. One of the suitcases slipped from its position on the steepest part of the escalator. Anant tried to maintain his balance, but one after the other all the stuff slipped and took Anant with it. He did a complete 180 deg flip and landed on the bags a few feet below on the escalator. He would have slid further down if 3 nice Sikh ladies would not have broken his fall. We all managed to get everyone up and safe in the end. Henceforth on all escalators we would take only what we could carry, deposit it on top and come back for the next. It was not like someone would run away with a 23 kilo bag while we were transporting the other...at least we hoped so. This is one incident I will never forget, and believe me, I forget a LOT of incidents.

Back to past present, we docked at a Bangladeshi Indian restaurant and had an elaborate mughlai dinner. Aarnav met his first love there. The Tarka Daal. He had never liked it in any of the restaurants that we had been to in Colorado. But ghar ki murghi daal barabar, and bahar ki daal was like murghi to him. He hogged on an entire adult serving of it along with rice and a little bit of sabji. I was almost in tears to see my skinny dude in love with food for the first time. Seeing him eat that way had made my day and we all had a restful night and were ready to follow the excel sheet the next day.

The next day was West London's turn. We took the tube and then the bus to Oxford street. We saw the Marble Arch and then decided to goto Hamley's toy store in London. I remembered Hamley's as an awe inspiring toy store from the last time I was in London in 2002. This time it seemed like a vertical toys r' us to me. It was incredible how I felt so different about the same place after a few years in mega polis.Anyways, Aarnav played with the wooden train station model literally for hours. He had been asking for a Spongebob toy for a long time and we bought it for him finally at Hamley's after paying double the price in British pounds. But Aarnav was happy and we owed him that much, for being such a good boy until then. I remembered my colleagues statement one day when cribbing about how demanding Aarnav was getting. He told me ' Sanika, little boys, little problems, big boys, big problems'. It helps me deal with my emotions when I am irritated with Aarnav.

After Aarnav's shopping it was my turn. I visited Clarks, Primark, Mango, Mexx and Zara. Did not buy a thing from those places, but made a lot of mental notes of snapshots of what to buy once I am back in the US. It did not make sense to buy any of the stuff in British pounds. I told Anant how awful we looked in comparison to the hot-shot, fashion-week round the year kinda people of London. I made a resolution that henceforth I would not be a tightwad and spend money on exclusive items. We ate dinner in Aarnav's sasuraal, the bangladeshi restaurant. Anant's patience had given up by that time and we headed back to our pigeon hole.

We woke up, checked out and took the tube to King's Cross station to catch the Eurorail to Paris. We were all excited since the train whisks you under the sea though the famous Channel Tunnel, also called the Chunnel, to Paris. Goodbye London, we loved you. Bongiorno! Paris.