Check your bag, sir?

[skyring]

The story of how I arrived in London in midsummer without my luggage is a poignant one, though not without its high points, the highest being that I didn't have to schlepp it onto the train system and then up (or slightly longer down) the hill to my hostel. In fact, I only had my carry on, so after pretending that I was driving the train, I got off the Docklands Light Railway at Bank station and strolled lightly and more or less randomly along London's grid system of streets until I arrived at my hostel.

We had a good flight in. Only a small plane, a four-jetter Avro, and half the passenger load was Australian, judging by the passports I saw. Crossed a Channel crowded with shipping then flew up the Thames and right over the centre of the city before turning onto the glide slope down to London City airport. I can see why people like this airport compared to Heathrow and Gatwick. Compared to them it's like getting off the bus at the side of the road instead of at the bus terminal. But my bags weren't on the bus.

So I arrived, a bit hot and sweaty, at my hostel. Wanting a shower and a change of clothes. Had a shower and put the drip back into drip-dry. But nothing to be done about the clothes. Put my head down for a bit. Drew the curtains, turned off the light, stretched out on my lower bunk, luxuriated in the horizontalness of it all, the softness of the mattriss, the increasing dreamy drowsiness...

And then one of the other hostellers entered the room, snapped on the light, saw me and spent ten minutes trying to be quiet while rummaging around in his things. Silly trying to nap in the middle of the day, but I got an hour, I guess. Then I got up, checked out the swapshelves, and then browsed through a couple of bookshops on Ludgate Hill.

Sat out the front of St Pauls for a bit, enjoying the coldness and cola taste of a Marks and Sparks generic drink, then next door to Starbucks and here I am. I usually get a 10p discount for having my own mug, but that's in my luggage, which is probably passing overhead about now.

Apparently they left it behind in Frankfurt and it's coming on the next jet, which gets in at quarter to seven. They'll courier it out to the hostel and I'll collect it there. In theory. I'll report back later.

Not sure what to do tomorrow. Elhamisabel, what would you do on a loose day in London?

Comments

You can't just have a nice uneventful trip, can you?

[gorydetails.livejournal.com]

Last time I flew in to London I arrived so early that the hotel wasn't open yet - my friends and I all had our luggage with us but nowhere to go to change clothes. The hotel-folk agreed to let us leave the bags on their doorstep for a few hours, and we went off to find a cafe and get some breakfast; after that I wandered around Regents Park by myself for a while, in that dreamy/dopy state resulting from jet-lag and too little sleep.

Of course, I wasn't a BookCrosser then. If I had been, I'd probably have set a higher priority on finding an internet cafe and some secondhand bookstores!