FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - The Double-Almost-RTW, Part 2: SIN-LHR-Europe-YOW and back on SQ/AC C and lotsa LCCs
Old Sep 28, 2006, 10:29 pm
  #4  
jpatokal
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
London (LHR-STN)

I was among the first to disembark from one of the first planes of the morning, so T3 was uncharacteristically quiet and, even thought I'd neglected to get my pink FastTrack slip, the queue to enter the EU was measured in seconds. I lugged my rollaboard through half a dozen tunnels, all at right angles to each other, and plunked down 9 quid for a Heathrow Connect ticket. This gets you more or less the same train as the Express running on the same track, only the Connect takes 11 minutes longer and the average expectation of your waiting time is 15 minutes, not 7.5. I sat in the concrete-lined station, which was cool, crisp and deathly silent in the dawn air, like a remote outpost of Oslo in otherwise solid brick London, and stared at the wall in a jetlagged state of semi-meditation.


Like the station, the Connect was quiet this early in the morning, as the jam was in the air above us -- I counted no less than five planes in LHR's stack, landing or waiting for permission to do so. I transferred onto the Tube at Paddington, which looked much more familiarly British (if not for the incessant panicmongering of American-style security announcements), and the Circle Line train crept out of the station only to stop in a tunnel and sit there, moping, for 10 minutes. Nobody in the train batted an eyelid. After an utterly incomprehensible announcement, the train lurched forward again and eventually deposited me at Liverpool St. It was just past 7 AM, and my flight wouldn't be leaving until 2 PM, so no matter how horrible the security queues it hardly made sense to go to Stansted yet. The gym at the station wanted 20 pounds for a day pass, and left luggage guys wanted 6 pounds for a bag, so I chose the cheaper of two evils, dumped my bag, and headed to look for the Tower Bridge without so much as a map.



It was probably the best six pounds I've ever paid. The weather was uncharacteristically gorgeous, sunny yet breezy, and the streets of the financial district of Bishopsgate were filled with power-dressing career women with stilettos that kill and insurance bankers in suits, everybody toting brollies and pissed-off expressions, storming angrily across the street with complete disregard for traffic lights whenever the flow of black cabs stopped for a second. I luxuriated in the feeling of not being in any hurry at all and poked my way down towards the Thames, popping my nose into St Botolphs without Bishopsgate (which sounds like a very British cross between a contested divorce and an anti-wrinkle toxin), poking at jars of pickled tripe in the Leadenhall Market and gazing up at the tersely named Monument, a Pillar raised by King in commemoration of Event. (Charles II and the Great Fire, if you must know.) At the utterly anticlimatic London Bridge, the modern version of which steadfastly refuses to fall down because it's buttressed with more concrete than LHR's runways, I turned left and poked my way along the riverbank to the Tower, which I circumambulated from a respectful distance lest I get sucked into an animatronic Experience that would leave me 15 pounds poorer. But behind it was something that either wasn't there the last time or is a very recent addition: the St. Katherine Docks, a series of Victorian-styled lofts with yacht parking lots for all the seriously loaded yuppies living nearby. It was utterly unexpected and thoroughly beautiful, especially as there was a row of actual wooden sailing ships moored at one end. Tower Bridge, lurking nearby, was also nearly as imposing as from the air and I revelled in the Londonosity of it all.



On the way back, I detoured a bit to swoon over the Matrix-style human storage systems of Lloyd's at Lime Street and then gazed in wonder at the Erotic Gherkin, as Swiss Re's rather vibratory headquarters on St. Mary Axe (another of those lovely British street names) is also known. I'm not sure why it is that reinsurers get the coolest buildings, but then again, I suppose it's only fair if your job consists not merely of insuring things, in itself only a rung above "lawyer" and below "used-car salesman" as a way to make a living, but worse yet, re-insuring somebody else's insurances.

I grabbed the first of today's three sandwiches (BLT baguette), choked on the ticket price (15 pounds!) and boarded what is still the slowest and crappiest-looking "airport express" on the planet. Dutiful boy that I am, I arrived precisely three hours before my flight as instructed, only to find that Easyjet wasn't, despite its earlier promises, boarding that early after all. I staked out some turf on the floor and joined the ever-expanding refugee camp until, a little under an hour later, they did start. I checked in my rollaboard and joined the queues to get through security, which were squirting out of the terminal when I arrived but had shrunk considerably during my earlier wait. I'd already successfully committed an agricultural felony by importing a raw pineapple into the European Union, so I'd decided to push my luck and try to smuggle a chapstick on board. Alas, even without a beep from the metal detector I was selected for a thorough patdown and the forbidden tube was detected and unceremoniously flung onto an ever-growing pile of confiscated contraband.

Everybody else had also shown up at STN three hours early and, since you were now allowed to bring your purchases on board, the next queues were at WHSmiths and Boots. I grabbed sandwich two (aged cheddar and pickle triangle) and, with seats again in short supply, camped out on the floor once more. STN is interesting in that, when flights are not ready to board, passengers are actively told to "Stay In Lounge" and eat, drink and shop some more; only when the busy gates free up and boarding is about to start do they switch to "Go To Gate" or "Boarding". My flight eventually rolled around, and it turned out to be right next to Maxjet and Eos at that, the two all-business longhaul carriers standing out like sore thumbs amidst the sea of low-cost carriers.

Last edited by jpatokal; Sep 29, 2006 at 10:58 pm
jpatokal is offline