Lee's European Adventure

I made it safely to London today for my first European adventure. I flew out of the Nashville airport at 7 p.m. yesterday on what felt like a VW microbus with wings. The little plane was so crowded that even my pocket change felt claustrophobic. Fortunately though, that was only for the short jump up to the windy city of Chicago. After that, the Boeing 747 Airbus that we took across the Atlantic felt like a hotel room. I even had a full three-seat row to myself so I stretched out to try and get a good night's sleep as we headed across the pond.

HeathrowInternational Airportis enormous, but not as big as the one in the A-T-L. I've been through that hub of the American south plenty of times, so I didn't feel too intimidated when I got off the plane at 11:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Heathrow is easy to navigate, and everybody working there speaks something like English. But in the line at customs, I heard more languages and dialects than I could count or even recognize. The long and diverse line moved quickly, however, and I made it into Great Britain without incident.

After passing through customs, I stopped at a machine and bought a ticket with my ATM card to travel throughout London and the surrounding areas by tube (what they call the subway) or by the famous red double-decker busses. My ticket gave me unlimited use of both for the day, and it cost me £8, or about $13. I don't know how much you've tried using public transportation in America lately, but that is an amazing deal.

The half-hour ride into town was great. London's underground tube is actually above ground until it approaches the central part of the city, so I was able to see much of the suburbs from the rails. Their idea of new just means post 1776, so I saw thousands of homes and not a single strip of vinyl siding. That brought joy to my heart; I love wood and brick.

I saw a few golf courses that weren't in the best shape. It is winter, and it seems that they don't place quite the emphasis on green grass year round that we do. It didn't seem to damper their good time though. I saw one chap cussing like a sailor as he headed into the woods, which is the same thing I do when I go out to the meticulously groomed American links for a little fun.

I got off the tube at Pimlico Station and decided to walk to the Travel Joy Hostel in Chelsea, where I reserved a bed two days ago online. I could have just taken the bus to a stop just outside the front door, but my bag has wheels so I decided to walk. If you've ever tried to walk around in the Caribbean, or anywhere that they drive on the opposite side of the road that we do, you know how confusing it is. We tell our kids to look both ways before crossing the street, but we never do it as adults. You have to fight instinct to look for traffic from different directions. Fortunately, they paint "LOOK LEFT" and "LOOK RIGHT" all over the streets.

I almost got ran over a couple of times but made it a few blocks over to the Thames and began walking down Grosvenor Road along the river. There was a light drizzle, but it was still a nice walk on a wide sidewalk next to the barricade that cities always put up along the sides of big rivers to keep disgruntled citizens from jumping in. The one by the River Thames is Gothic and iron and rusty. This fence is probably less than 50 years old, but to me it seems 1,000.

It was about a seven-minute walk to the hostel, and as I got close, I recognized the front façade from the pictures online, but I also saw a big factory across the river that looked extremely familiar, I just couldn't figure out where I had seen it before.

Travel Joy Hostel doubles as King William IV, an English pub that has been around since the early 19th century and has always provided accommodations for travellers. These days it is owned by two Irishmen who love music. An acoustic guitar hangs on the wall for anybody to pick around on, great tunes come from the speakers and apparently the stage hosts one of the city's most popular "open mic nights" tonight, and every Friday night.

When I get up to my room, I step out onto the balcony and look out across the Thames at the factory I saw as I was walking. The sun, which had barely come out, was setting and the sky had a brilliant orange glow. That's when it hit me. A picture of that factory is hanging on my wall in Murfreesboro. I always cover my apartments with classic album covers and what I'm looking at is a part of that collage. But, I have previously only known London's Battersea Power Station as Pink Floyd's "Animals."

I'm taking that as a sign to make this a wild adventure, tallyho.