magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

A red-eye flight basically means that you've got two days in a row without a night in between. Any sleep that you manage to get on the plane mitigates this to some extent. But I've never been terribly successful with sleeping on airplanes, and this trip proved no exception.

I arrived in London at some hour of the morning that even for local time was considerably earlier than I'm normally awake, let alone out and about. The line at immigration was absurdly long, but I eventually managed to snake my way to the front of the queue, and without incident was allowed to enter the country.

I found my way to the Heathrow Express train into London. Figured out how to buy a ticket from the automated machine. From Paddington station found my way to the Underground, and made as much sense as I could of the tube map and zone system fare structure. I knew that the hotel I was staying in was on Piccadilly. And figured that the Piccadilly Circus Station was most likely on or at least near the street. And that there was a train, the Bakerloo line, that got me from point A to point B.

On Piccadilly I set out in what I assumed was the most probably direction. The street numbers seemed to be going down. I kept walking and did eventually come to the hotel, whose main entrance was boarded up with a construction fence, which jived with the fact that their website had said that the lobby was under renovations.

It was still too early to check in however, so I left my bag, and in something of a fog, set out to explore the immediate area of Westminster. May Fair. Green Park. Buckingham Palace, where I took a photo of the guards in the fuzzy hats for Chris. And eventually a coffee shop (not a Starbucks, although there did seem to be one on pretty much every block, their business model has apparently worked even in traditionally tea drinking England) for a double espresso.

My phone rang while I was drinking my coffee. My plan does apparently work overseas, although I suspect that it costs something like $1.29 a minute. My first meeting was in a few hours. Now it was time to head back to the hotel, unpack, and most importantly, take a shower.

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The hotel is very nice. But, it's rather old-world nice. Which is appropriate in London, I suppose, but my own tastes tend more towards sleek, modern nice. I do have a view over Green Park from my room, and although I'm only on the 6th floor and not above tree height, the trees are leafless this time of year and I can just make out the curve of the London Eye through their branches.

Took a cab out to Canary Wharf, site of the tallest couple of buildings in London, as well as (I suppose it's time to let the cat out of the bag) Bank of America's European headquarters. This afternoon's meeting was largely a formality, an introduction to the bank's London properties, meeting a few of the faces involved, no real heavy lifting in the work department.

Then, after a brief walk around Canary Wharf, and a brief bite to eat, it was back to the hotel on the tube, and zoning out in front of British TV for a couple of hours before ordering a salad from room service, drinking a beer, and falling quickly to sleep.