Milkman's Great London Adventure

I touched down at Heathrow on Saturday morning, at around 7am. This is my first time overseas, and I can already sense that I may never make it home again. Why? To begin with, I'm fairly positive that I will get run over by a Citroen (small European car), coming down what I consider to be the wrong side of the street, and driven by a driver on the wrong side of the car. It's already almost happened more than a few times. Try as I might, I just can't get used to looking for oncoming traffic from the right, as I cross a street.

Near-death experiences aside, there are numerous other idiosyncrasies that London has to offer. One thing that drives me nuts is the fact that the streets are so poorly labeled. I thought New York City could be frustrating. Well, at least it's formed in a numerical grid, with the majority of the streets going one way. Here in jolly ol' London town, there seems to be no such thing as a double yellow line. The cars parked on the streets face in any direction they choose, giving you practically no idea which way the traffic runs. One would assume to stick to the left-hand side of the road, but then again, one is never sure if it's a two-sided street.

The first thing the girl and I did once I arrived (she got here a day earlier than I) was to head out to a French café (Patisserie Valerie) listed in our Fodor's Travel Guide. What should have been a 15 minute walk at best turned into a two-hour tourist quest, which left me feeling as if I had been swallowed by a black hole. Our waitress was a French girl who was cutely reminiscent of Natalie Portman and someone else whom I can't seem to remember right now. Deal with it. Another thing that is difficult about finding your way around London is that no two streets seem to align with one another. For example, if I'm coming up a street that runs north and south, which will cross, say, Knightsbridge Road, the street on the other side does not extend from the street I'm currently on. Instead, it seems to shift slightly to the left or the right. Also, my map seems to list every street that isn't labeled in real life, while the streets that are labeled aren't listed in the map. Does that make sense?

The best part was when Michelle and I were walking up toward Hyde Park, and a car full of Brits stopped close to us, and one guy leaned out and asked, "Hey, mate. Can you tell me how to get to Wembley Stadium from here?" I replied in my New York accent "I think you're asking the wrong guy!" He replied "I think I am!" Haw haw haw!

Later in the day, Shelly and I went to a pizza joint in London, almost positive that they won't be able to come up with anything remotely pizza-like. Of course, they actually did a pretty good job silencing the critics, delivering two formidable personal-sized pizzas. Not bad. The waitress here was distinctly Italian, which struck me as odd since we had yet to be waited on by anyone with a British accent. Question: Do British people actually work in London?

The city is subtly different from any city in America, that's for sure. So much so that Michelle actually had to ask me if a garbage can was actually a garbage can. I also bought a bottle of Lucozade, which sounds like a hard-core cold-remedy medicine, but it is actually some sort of energy drink that tastes remotely like ginger ale. My pockets are filling with coins as well, with the British pound being available in both paper and coin formats - kind of like our Susan B. Anthonys but much more common. In fact, I think I see more Pound coins than I do the paper equivalent. Waste of paper I guess. Michelle also learned that lemonade, in England, is another way of saying "7-Up."

Naturally, the thrills don't stop there. Being the lightning bolt of efficiency that she is, Michelle arranged a rental car for our eventual trip up to Scotland later in the week. The twist is that she thought it would be better if she ordered a manual transmission. I guess it wasn't enough that I would have to contend with driving on the opposite side of the car, and on the opposite side of the road, but apparently she felt it would be a good idea to throw in a stick shift (to be manipulated with my left hand) and a clutch. Thank God I play video games, because otherwise this would be an eye-hand-coordination disaster. Anyhow, I'll have more interesting experiences to blabber about once Sam Kennedy and I get done tearing through the hot, sweaty monster known as the ECTS.