Capital City - Here I come

This weekend it was time for the first ever Cafepress UK Mingler.
Time to travel down to London to meet other likeminded Cafepress shopkeepers to chat ab out the business itself and about current goings on in the company.

I travelled down to London on Friday with the idea to do a little sight-seeing and do the tourist bit that I haven't done of my previous trips down south. Unfortunately though him upstairs had other ideas. As the train pulled into St Pancras I could see the rain pouring hard on the ground. I stepped off the train and it wasn't only raining but also very windy. As i left St. Pancras station and made my way up to Kings Cross for the tube, I could feel my feet getting wet and the bottoms of my jeans soaking already. By the time I reached Kings Cross I knew all I wanted to do was get to my hotel and get changed.

What I didn't know was that there had been a major re-build to Kings Cross Station and I was all disoriented when I found that the ticket office wasn't where I expected it to be. I did get my tickets (a day ticket covering all zones for £5.70) and found my way to my tube.

Note to self: Next time I need to plan for a trip - Do not rely on Google maps to plan the journey. Find real maps that show ALL roads and modes of transport.

I got off the tube and started to walk what I thought was a small distance towards the location of my hotel. After walking for half an hour I came to a fork in the road which wasn't on the map so of course I thought I was going in the wrong direction. So I turned round and started walking in the opposite direction. Now I could go on like this but I will cut it short - After becoming quite intimate with the same stretch of road for a couple of hours I finally discovered that it was twice as long as the map would have me believe and as the rain lashed down I finally spyed my hotel slap bang opposite a drive thru KFC which was slight compensation for my drowned rat look and my aching legs and numb feet.

The room was nice and cosy with a double bed and en suite bathroom. Not bad for £35 for the night especially with the added breakfast too. OK it was a hike out of town but you couldn't rent a telephone box for that in the city.
The first thing I did was change out of my soaking clothes into my PJs and take a nap to rest my aching feet.

Saturday morning my alarm went off at 8am as I didn't want to miss my breakfast. I got dressed and went down to the breakfast area.
Laid out were bowls, plates, glasses and cups so you could help yourself to cereal, Juice and coffee. There was also loaves of bread and 2 large toasters to make your own toast. I decided not to start off greedy so I just had 2 slices of toast and butter and a glass of juice. When I finished I decided to take coffee back to my room and watch Hider before packing up and checking out.

I thought that as I have never been on a London bus, I would hop on the bus to Walthamstow and then get the tube from there back into the city. I was travelling light so that I didn't have any hefty suitcases to cart around the rest of the time.

I hopped on the central line to begin with and made my first stop at Oxford circus. As you know I am not much of a shopper though so 100 yards down Oxford street and I was bored already.
I saw one of those classic stalls selling London gifts and bought the children a cap each then headed back to the tube to make my way to Liverpool st. for our meet up.

Now I was in such a tissy before setting off about getting directions to my hotel that I had totally forgotten to print off the directions to the pub - If they would have been any good anyway - So once again I was wondering up and down the same street. I was totally blind though as I had actually walked past the George 3 times and not even noticed it!

I did get a great picture of the gerkin though


When I finally found the pub I spotted Adam straight away from all the pictures I have seen of him. All my nervousness went out the window and I seemed to settle in right away.

We spent a good couple of hours putting the world to rights and discussing our respective businesses until the noise in the pub became too overpowering (well it was a sports pub and Liverpool were beating Arsenal 4-1) so we decided to go for a little sight seeing tour. Adam really wanted to go over the Millennium bridge so that is where we headed first.

I was a bit tentative about crossing the bridge but there were so many people that it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.
I even took a couple of photos.



On the other side of the bridge is the Tate gallery. The others in the group did discuss going into the gallery but I was so glad that idea was dismissed. You must know that isn't my cup of tea at all (or maybe it is seeing as I don't do Tea either)
Outside of the gallery though was Budgieman himself.




He is going to be on X-Factor don't you know!!
I don't know how far we walked as we were talking shop and chatting about all manner of subjects. We finally stopped for nourishment at the Royal festival hall
The others ate chips but I just had to have Hot Chocolate and a gorgeous Chocolate chip Muffin. There was a huge Book fair going on and the place was bustling.
We chatted about my obsession with food and the looming smoking ban which we are all absolutely in favour of.

We walked back over the river and along the Embankment until we found ourselves back at the Millennium bridge where we stopped for a last sit down and look at the views before everyone parted company.

The next few hours were kind of a blur really as I passed the time until my 11.30pm bus back home. I would much rather have got a train earlier on in the evening but I got a special National express funfare of £1 and I couldn't pass that up.
It was hard to believe that there were so many people around at that time of the evening but of course they all had £1 funfares.
I passed the time away by listening to my MP3 and reading the hilarious Gospel according to Chris Moyles. I am sure that there were people staring at me as I was crying with laughter. Honestly you have to read it, I just can't do the man enough justice.

I don't remember much of the journey home. I had planned to read my book but once the bus got started up I could hardly keep my eyes open so I drifted in and out of sleep for the whole 4 hours.
As I got off the bus at almost 3.30 am and saw all the hapless drunks wandering the streets looking for taxis I wondered how I was going to get home but as I started to cross over the zebra outside the Assembly rooms a Yellow cab pulled up with his for hire light on so I swiftly jumped in and he took me home.