London visit - day 1 of 4

I soon realised my satnav is going to make me drive down the M4 right into the centre of London - no ifs or butts. Wasn’t that bad really, all I had to do is to imagine I was driving downtown Ljubljana - just on a much bigger scale. And it really went very well except at the very end one of the roads was closed and I had to make up a detour on my own - only to get myself even more stuck into the dreaded London rush-hour traffic jams.

In the evening I met up with a vet friend and after that went to the midnight session at the Comedy store near Leicester square . First two acts were quite good (the second one was Steve Hughes, then followed a intermission. After that a chap came on that wasn’t so good but the crowd got really nasty and booed him off. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Although it was clear this was not his night I felt quite sorry for him. Then came an older gentleman that we later found out was a quick replacement for the show. He was so bad, he was actually cool - full off jokes that in most cases would be more suitable for an OAP venue.

During his act a fight broke out, but all I could see was a bunch of security personnel trying to restrain the guy. The last act was a very funny and very good Canadian Tom Stade.

The show ended at about half past two in the morning. Of course all the underground trains do not operate then so I tried getting a taxi - tough as well as they all seemed to be very busy. So I did what I do best  - relied on myself and walked: from Leicester square to just south of the Tower bridge . Took me about 60 minutes and I didn’t get knifed or attacked in any way. Went to bed at about 4am.

During my walk I found a great Christmas scene. As I was crossing the Millennium bridge southward i turned back and saw a big beautiful Christmas tree in the distance with the St. Pauls Cathedral as a backdrop. The tree was decorated with many bright lighs and many of them were randomly flickering - almost like some kind of a strobe effect. Couldn’t take a photo as my camera just wouldn’t pick it up as it should be seen.

My visit to London was also a good opportunity to use my iPhone to help navigate round the many streets of London. The first evening I was shown how I should really have the iPhone 3G S instead of the 3G I actually have. The problem was actually orientating myself in regards to the map. It will show you on the map where you are and perhaps where you need to go to but not actually how to get there - at least not very well. The 3G one does not have a compass and as the phone boxes don’t have moss growing on them on the north side I had a no way of determining where north and south was!