Return To London For Our Last Four Days

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

Note of interest:

The "accident" and killing involving two CIA agents coincides with a post I made on "April 21" 2008.  I wrote:  "As for Guachochí, it wasn't until three weeks ago that we found out that our boondocker's sixth sense had paid off. On the front page of our local paper, El Norte, was an article about Goachochí and the invasion by the Mara Salvatrucha gang. They are there helping the drug traffickers. Go figure".   The situation hasn't changed in over 18 years and has only gotten worse.  Such a tragedy.  I remember very well that day we drove into Guachochí.  We parked, walked to their park with a lake, and were pretty much told we weren't welcome and that it would be best to move on.   The place was a hornet's nest.

Back to the trip.  We returned the car on Thursday.  It was a three-hour drive from Lincoln to Heathrow.  Our hotel was down the street, a few blocks.  We booked a room at the Ibis.  Well, my bad.  There are two Ibis on Bath Rd.  They are two different franchises, although one is Ibis Styles.  A very nice room at an affordable price.  

The next day, we headed into London near the Norbury Station.  Our Airbnb was just a block off Norbury and four blocks from the train station.  However, when we got to Victoria station to transfer to Norbury, the system was down, or at least that's what they said.  There was a transportation strike underway.  We took a city bus that was about 30 minutes longer, but it dropped us off right on the corner of the Airbnb.

For the most part, the underground is old and rundown.  Millions of passengers each day take their toll on the system.  It's fairly clean and has little to no graffiti.  People are pushy but friendly, and you need to move or get run over.  It's an experience for sure.  The oldest operating station is the Baker line, which was built in 1863, and you can see some stations, just by the type of construction, that are from the 1800s.  The tunnels are narrower, and the rail cars are also the same.  The subway is very noisy when you are in the cars, and you can hear the squealing of the tracks.  It can be very hard to talk to someone without yelling.

Victoria Station is a huge terminal and hub for the system.  It is within a few blocks of Buckingham Palace and has shops and restaurants.  In the last segment of this trip blog, I will show you how most people eat and what they eat.  Very different.

Saturday, we took off for Camden on the northwest side of the city.  Everyone told us we needed to go there.  Each has a reason, and mine was a bit different.  It's basically a New Orleans-style street area filled with shopping, eating, drinking, street art, and music venues.  Thousands of people were walking around as if it were some type of fairgrounds.  But there is so much more to the place.

First is the Georgian charm architecture.  Beautiful old buildings line the streets.  Camden was developed in the late 1700s into a residential and industrial area thanks to the waterway and the railroad.  The town is located on what was once the Earl of Camden's manor and grounds.

Camden Town's main drag is roughly 1/2 mile long and filled with some pretty interesting shops and stores.  There are side mini-malls filled with stalls of all kinds, selling name-brand clothing, souvenirs, and food.  The food stall employees hawk samples as a way to sell their products, most of which you can carry and eat while you walk.  

We have seen locks in Canada, Panama, and now the Camden Lock.  It was constructed in 1820 and used to transport goods from the Midlands to the docks.  The architect, John Nash, was also responsible for the massive extension added to Buckingham Palace under King Edward IV.  

Today, the canal boats take tourists through the locks.  We watched the "captain" check the engine compartment, the exterior, and prepare the deck for the passengers.  

I'm not attracted to these tourist places, but I do enjoy watching all the people.  They come from all over and speak many different languages.  There are even punk guys who hang out on the bridge, and you can pay to have your picture taken with them.

It amazes me how much stuff people can sell and equally how much stuff people can buy.  The world is filled with so much of the same these days.  The same souvenirs are sold by all of the shops, and people are lured in with promises of an even better price than the guy next door.

Before we headed home, we had one last stop.  Juan wanted to cross the street at Abbey Road.  Several of his friends had been urging him to go.  We had walked quite a bit that day and took the underground to St. John's Wood station.  What a great escape from the people and noise at Camden.  The neighborhood is very upper-class and very quiet.  It was similar to walking in the La Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City.

Beautiful homes line the streets along with some apartment buildings.  One thing about England is that most of the housing is townhouse style.  Supposedly, the style came from the industrial era when large groups of workers were needed.  Building townhouses was part of the solution, along with limited land and high prices.  We really marvel at the homes in the U.K., where many or most are built with exterior brick and slate roofs.  

Back at the apartment, we had a drink, had some leftover pizza, and watched a movie.   Waking up on Monday, we fixed breakfast, cleaning up what food we had left.  It was a few sausages and eggs with toast.   

We headed back to Heathrow to the other Ibis hotel.  Pretty much the same except for the fact that we arrived an hour early and they wanted to charge us 20GBP for an early check-in.  We waited in the lobby and used the internet.  I walked to the store nearby to get a sandwich and a cup of noodles for our dinner.

Up at 5:00 a.m., we watched our Mexican news program, showered, and took the bus to the terminal. 

This really worked out well for us.   The hotel is five minutes from the Heathrow bus terminal, which is at the airport.  We walked across the street, hopped on the bus, and there we were.  The moving sidewalks do the rest and before we knew it, we were in the airport.  We used the check-in kiosk, and it gave us our seat assignments, but wouldn't print Juan's because he needed to scan his U.S. visa, and it wouldn't seem to do it.  We asked for assistance, and the woman asked if we wanted to sit together.  We didn't pay for seats, so it was a good thing.  We ended up in row 52 at the back of the plane.  We both had side-by-side aisle seats and no one on either side of us.  

The in-flight service was the best ever.  Very good food and snacks.  The flight left at 9:26 a.m., and we arrived in Atlanta around 2:30 p.m.  A two-hour layover, and off we went on AeroMexico to Monterrey.  I watched Sarah's Oil, a very good movie.  Juan was disappointed with Anaconda.   

Back home at the ranch, everything is green and back to normal. Our gardener did a good job of keeping the place up.  Of course, our cameras helped us to keep things in check.  

I still have another post or two about how things worked out for us on this trip.  It was expensive, but we knew that going into it.   We may have given up boondocking in Mexico but our rving days may be far from over.  More on that later.