Tuesday 17th May 2022
I am always amazed that in a matter of 10 hours I'm transported to the Northern Hemisphere where the water goes down a drain the wrong way and the sun disorientates me. But I did choose perfect timing to arrive. It's a hot and humid 26°C in the city of London.
My flight was shorter than my last few flights flying direct instead of going via Dubai to the Northern parts of the UK. So a quick 10 hour flight turned into a sketchy 5 hour nap but I saw the full moon, the sun sneaking up and the angels bouncing on the clouds.
I ended up sitting next to a dear 82 old man, Michael, who had visited his daughter in KZN after a 3 year hiatus due to the pandemic. He spoke in a rather posh English accent which started getting my ear tuned into the very multi cultural London. Heathrow Airport had thousands of people traveling through and I sat with a small grin on my face on the hour long tube trip to my hostel because it all felt so 'normal' again. Masks are all but invisible and the Londoners are revelling in the sunshine on all the open spaces and pavement cafés. I stuck to the shadows and tried to keep cool as I was taking hundreds of pictures of architecture and cool buildings.
My reason for choosing this hostel is the absolutely exquisite building that is surprisingly across from my bunk bed window. I did a video, which you can watch here. The best advice to any South African traveling overseas is to not convert the currency. Work out your Rand budget per trip and convert that amount to pounds and break it down to daily spend. Then try very, very hard to forget Rands for a while. The conversion is on the edge of my mind and I think that after my Siesta I should be better. It should stay light later so I'm hoping to go exploring after I upload this on the Hostel lobby only, wifi. (The photos below are sadly not youth hostel lobby, lol
Viva London!
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