DECEMBER 2011 ADVENTURE EXTRAORDINAIRE

After sticking close to home for six months, Mr. and Mrs. Gym are off again and have arrived in London, England. After circumnavigating the globe from east to west last spring, we decided to try a trip in the other direction before the year finished up. Losing hours is hard! If you are going to travel, my recommendation is to  - go west, young man.

We left Calgary at 6 PM on November 30, 2011 and arrived here at 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday, December 1, 2011. The flight, albeit direct and in the front of the plane, was not my favourite flying experience. Essentially, you force your body to shut down early and try to sleep on what is a shortened night, and during which precious hours of darkness are stolen away as you fly in the opposite direction of the sun. The goal was to arrive in London, awake with the British and then just continue on with them in their much earlier timezone. Well, we are bush-whacked! Yesterday we went for dinner, our only meal of the day, at 4 PM and retired to bed at 7 PM. And here I sit at 7 AM, Friday morning, London Time (12.02 yesterday, Calgary time), having slept through most of the London night feeling tired and cheated, cheated of those 7 hours which we lost.

A word on Air Canada's new sleeping pods. They do afford the flyer more space and the individual privacy to be able to explore the depths of his/her nostril with an index finger without the worry that he/she is being observed. However, when people are given a chance to stretch out and really sleep, the chorus of duelling snorers can be quite incredible. I am glad that some travellers were able to get comfortable enough to attain deep sleeps. I was not able to sleep that well. Let's face it, a chair that changes into a bed probably has a few bumps in it and since I sleep on my side it was my experience that the pressure points in the 'bed' put alternating sets of limbs to sleep as I tossed and turned, but the rest of my body stayed awake. So I did not get much real rest on the plane.

So what are we doing here in London? Well, as most of you know, this is a fantastic city with a multitude of experiences for every traveller. We hope over the next few days to hit a few of the sites and I will try to write about these experiences in future submissions for you to read about. But there are two main reasons that we are in London for a few days, as follows:

1.We had the opportunity to hook up with our British friends the Andersons. We met Brenda and Roland in Viet Nam early on our trip last spring and Linda and Brenda have kept up with each other via email since we parted ways in Dublin last May. They live in Essex, where the Thames drains into the English Channel and yesterday they hopped on a train to come into London to take us out for dinner. We walked about 1.5 miles to a place called Browns Restaurant and Bar on St. Martin's Lane, not too far from the Canadian Embassy. It was nice to dine with our friends who obviously have 'local knowledge'. We got caught up with them and learned about their upcoming travel plans to South America. After dinner, they were kind enough to lead us back to our hotel and then they needed to jump back on the train for a 2-hour passage back home. It was a great way to start the trip; and,

2. we are here is because London is that it is a staging area for the main event of this journey. We are here to see the sights of this great city for a few days but it is a jumping-off point for the second leg of the trip which takes us into the southern hemisphere. We are going to Africa!  And so we will acclimatize ourselves to the European time zone, and then head south to Cape Town to see some of the wonders of Africa. This partially stems from the fact that in our longish journey around the world earlier this year, we never made it over the equator, we came close in Singapore but did not cross it. We will have made 2011 a truly memorable year for travel when we board the South African Airways flight on Sunday for Cape Town.


We have been to London before and we have seen some of the sites but how can you ever have seen it all. Today we hope to experience the London Eye and will stroll past Buckingham Palace on the way. Tomorrow the plan is to take a tour of the new Olympic facilities and see a Christmas fair in Green Park. We will undoubtedly also experience some other things to write to you about over the next couple of days.

Until Sunday when we depart London I will try to send a couple of reports from our temporary home here between Hyde Park and Green Park.

Roland and Brenda Anderson in the Lobby of our Hotel

Browns Restaurant and Bar