Holy buckets that was a long day!
We arrived to a beautiful spring day in London this morning. For some crazy reason we had a 7:30 hr layover in London before our flight to Nice, France. So there was no hesitation, we decided to spend a few hours in the big city. After chatting to the customs officer for 10 mins about football (nice guy, but he was a Spurs fan...), we jumped on the Heathrow Express and headed to Paddington station.
We had a couple of traditional stops to make on our short visit. First up was Lillywhites for new football boots...
Cultured kid - He was only in the UK for a few hours and he already has a stiff upper lip.
One of the main reasons for going in to London was I needed to stop at my fave clothing store, Firetrap. I had a store credit from when I was over in February, and I wanted to use it up. After dragging my tired family through London, we arrived at a boarded up Firetrap store! They went into administration 5 days ago! Bankrupt! Kaput! Sigh.....
There only thing that could repair my broken heart. - Wagamama for Chicken Katsu Curry. Absolute Gold.
Next stop was a trip to Orange to top up my UK phone. "Oh, sorry, what's that? The store shut down? Oh, ya, no... that's ok..... ugh!" I remember when I bought that phone, everyone told me how easy it was to "Top it Up" because EVERY store has a top up machine. Uhn uhn, not today. EVERY store either didn't have a Top Up machine, or their's was BROKEN... ya, that's right, broken! As we wandered aimlessly for the easy to find Top Up shop, the family was fading, so I left them at the Leicester Square tube station and did what any mobile phone user who needs help would do, I wandered into China Town. Amazingly I was shot down at the pork bun shop, the currency exchange store and two noodle houses, but then it appeared.... The world's pinkest, junkiest trinket store ever! Knock off Hello Kitty crap everywhere. Bingo!! Mr. Lee was the self proclaimed "Top Up King" of London. He even kept his machine locked up in the cabinet with the "higher end" Hello Kitty gear.
Amazingly, that killed most of the time we had in London, so we headed to the airport for our flight to Nice.
We arrived in Nice around 9:00 pm local time. I guess today was the "sports talk with customs guys day". Mr. French customs officer looked at our passports and promptly asked if I support the Flames. I wasn't sure if he meant rioting and burning stuff kinda flames, or the Calgary Flames, so I said yes. Turns out he is a big Montreal fan. Nice! or nice.... Which is it?
Talkative family on London to Nice flight.
I finally figured out what the worlds biggest scam is: Hotel Shuttle Buses.
As soon as we shook the Habs fan at customs, I phoned the hotel and requested the shuttle bus. "No problem sir, it will be about 20 minutes." Ok, that sounded weird to me, because I remember looking on the map at our "airport hotel", which was located at the "airport". Well 45 minutes later a wee little van showed up! 45 mins! Oh, and get this.... Any guess on how long the drive to the hotel was? Anyone? Ok, I will give you hint.
3 minutes.
