Week 1 Blog - London, UK

As you have probably guessed from our previous blog, we are filling our days quite a bit.


Wednesday (13/04/05)

Arrived in London at 5:10am, and got the tube to Turnpike Lane. We started off the day with an English breakfast in the greasy diner across from where I used to live in Brampton Park Road.

We then headed around to Niall's and did some catching up with him and checking out the scooters. Niall has a great shop.



We do a bit of work on our scooters (I also dropped the ring while cleaning my hands and it bounced into the loo). Then Niall took us to see Dave (old scooter friend) at his scooter paint shop. From there we went off, ate lunch and then bought our scooter gear (jackets, helmets and trousers) all very cool and high tech (our helmets have a inbuilt sunglasses which flip down).

Niall then dropped us off at Denise, Annella and Ethan's house. There we are presented with the honeymoon suite, with balloons, champagne. Its great to them all again and we share a meal and some drink at the local Italian restaurant (Rimini).



Thursday (14/04/05)

This was the insurance nightmare day. We managed to cut through some red tape, to sort out the scooters paperwork. We are forever indebted to Niall because without him our trip would never have happened. After much effort we are now able to legally ride the scooters in England.

That night we go to the New Originals scooter club meeting. Met Barry (another old friend) and Peter Moore (author of Vroom with a View). Spent the night drinking, eating Pizza and talking scooters.


Friday (15/04/05)

We decided this would be our sightseeing day. Went into central London and walked around Piccadilly, through Hyde Park to Parliament House. The wondered down the Thames to the Tate Modern. At 3:00PM we caught up with Denise in Soho and then went out drinking and to a restaurant (meeting up with Annella, Ethan and Mark on the way).



Other events of the day included - scooter clothing shop hopping down Carnaby Street, drinking at the alternative pub the Intrepid Fox (which was not full of German tourists as I remember) and taking lots of photos (e.g. Shriek being arrested by police). We decided to leave Monday for Ireland instead of Sunday.

Saturday (16/04/05)

Woke to a big fry-up breakfast. Insurance hassles continued, this time with the europe greencard top insurance that we need... No banks allow us to transfer money to Germany (yes, the only places that do green card insurance for non-residents is outside of the UK and none of them take credit card). Will have to sort this out Monday.

Went down to Niall's and bumped into Natalie (a friend from Australia) and she took us out for coffee (and gave us a camp light for a wedding present, along with some good info on touring Europe). We then headed back to Niall's and spent the rest of the day bolting on our scooter luggage system. We then walked back to Denise’s via a canal walk, with many parts making you forget that you were in a big city.

John and Lynn came down from Leister. So Denise and Annella cooked us up an awesome curry (we have resolved to add curry to our diet when we get back) and we headed off for a night on London.

Sunday (17/04/05)

Got up early and did the canal walk again, to put the finishing touches to our scooters. The weather now is great, which is a good omen for tomorrow when we head off. Blue skys and warm enough for a t-shirt.

Out for diner again tonight, the scoots are parked outside and tomorrow we will be off…