Day 3: Tuesday, 12 August 2014 - Cardiff, Wales and London, England

First Great Western trains.

Cardiff, Wales
Seriously, I stayed up way too late again last night. My body still seems to think it’s on Eastern time. It needs to get with the program!

10:56am, Leaving Cardiff for London
Well, I'm on the train, despite not sticking to my original plan. I just could not convince myself to get up at 8:00am, and decided to once again forgo breakfast. I made it downstairs and checked out at 10:30, hoofed it to the train station, and still had time to order a cappuccino and croissant with 3 minutes to spare before the train arrived. I don't like cutting it so close, but my body thanked me for the extra sleep. I got five and a half hours, instead of only four.


The rain was kind to me. It rained all night, but had stopped by the time I left the hotel. Five minutes after we left Cardiff Central, it started raining again. Thanks, weather! I honestly appreciate not being a soggy mess on the train.

The SIM cards in my phone and iPad still haven't been activated. 8-( They have another 2 hours before the 24 hours are up. If I need it, I hope that someone at a Vodafone shop in London can help me, even though I bought the chips in Wales.

My plan for the day seems on track so far. I should arrive at Paddington Station at 1:00pm. This will give me an hour and a half to make it to the Kensington Palace Orangery to meet Debi Chowdhury for high tea. This will really be meeting her, as I don't recall ever having met her in person before. Since the ExCel Centre is an hour in the opposite direction, I'm going to stow my luggage at the Left Luggage at Paddington, and retrieve it after Tea. Debi has offered to let me share her room at the Aloft tonight, since my reservation at the Ramada starts tomorrow, and I plan to take her up on that offer.

The Aloft appears to have rooms now, for only 19/night more than the Ramada, and it's connected to the convention centre. I was going to change our hotel, with Amy's approval, but the Infotel website said the reservation had to be cancelled 5 days in advance, or we'd have to pay the full charge! No way! I'll inquire at the hotel today to see if it's really the case. 


11:30am, Bristol, England
I am pretty sure the train I took to Cardiff didn't go through Bristol. Then again, I did sleep a lot on that train trip. This time I am reading a book and crocheting on a baby blanket. The trip is two hours, so I should get a lot done.

One of the monitors on the back of the train seats.

11:45am, Approaching Swindon
The seemingly dead video monitors on the back of the seats just sprang to life! Now I know why I should have brought the wired earphones, instead of only my Bluetooth one. Sigh. There is a moving map to track our location, but it won't stay up long, switching back to the main menu display after about a minute.


12:31pm, Reading, England
They pronounce Reading as Redding. Now I know why the city in Pennsylvania is pronounced that way.

I caved and put on my jacket. It's colder than I could stand in just my shirt. Today's choice of jacket is my new Doctor Who TARDIS jacket. I bought only the XL because the arms were much too large on the XXL. It is a wee bit too small around the waist… for now. But at £30, I expect to have this jacket a LONG time!


1:05pm, Paddington Station, London 
We arrived only a few minutes late. The train got delayed a bit outside London. I asked at the train information desk about the charge on my card from Sunday, and the woman said that wasn't possible. When I insisted it happened, she sent me to the ticket office. I don't have time to deal with that now; I'll come back later. 

I left my luggage at Left Luggage. It will cost £20, but that is SO worth it to not have to lug it around!

I went to the Underground and took a District Line train to Kensington High Street. There is a Vodafone shop directly across from the exit. I'll come back after the Tea. I walked toward Kensington Palace, not really sure of where I was going. I finally asked a tour bus driver who was waiting in his group, and he said to try in Kensington Park. 

The gates of Kensington Palace

That park is massive by our definition of park in the US! I walked down the main path, and finally found a building with gilded gates. Yep, Kensington Palace. It's a museum now! I asked at the entrance, and they sent me to The Orangery out back. Ah, ha! The place I suspected it was, but couldn't find.

Beth Welsh and Carol Doms

I arrived about 5 minutes ahead of Debi Chowdhury, so now I know what she looks like. The other people arrived about 10 minutes later, and it turns out one is Carol Doms! I haven't seen her in years. The other person is Beth Welsh, so now I know two new people. 

We wound up staying two hours, drinking tea, eating scones and sandwiches, and chatting. I also had a lovely glass of rose champagne. After we were done and paid, we visited the ladies room, then Beth and Carol went one way, and Debi and I the other. We walked over to look at one of the sunken gardens and take photos, then Debi went to find more gardens, and I headed for the Vodafone store. 



5:13pm, Vodafone at Kensington High Street
I just arrived to request assistance with my phone and iPad. There appears to be only two employees, and 7 customers ahead of me. This will take a while.


6:09pm: I’m finally finished at the Vodafone store. They had to replace both the chip in the cell phone, and the chip in the iPad. Apparently Vodafone had problems setting up new accounts the day before, because they'd spent the whole day sorting out issues with new accounts. Because I wanted to meet up with the Florida gang later, and did not know when and where exactly, I decided to stand in the store and check Facebook. Good thing I did that, as the iPad didn’t work, and I had to go back to the girl to get her to fiddle with my account some more. She got it sorted. Hurray! I feel human again, with portable access to the Internet. :-)


6:48pm, Paddington Station
I am incredibly grateful for the kindness of the strangers who've helped me lug my suitcase up the stairs. It would take me forever doing it alone! They really need lifts in all the stations. Even if it meant walking more.

Speaking of walking more, I hit 8,000 steps at 6:15pm. All the standing I've been doing today is killing my feet for sure. I wanna sit down SO bad! If the blasted train would just arrive!!


The train finally did arrive, after two District line trains. The Circle Line trains are all new and shiny. I finally found a place in the last car where I could park my suitcase beside me.

There were SO many stairs to navigate in order to exit the Tower Hill station! More people who were kind enough to get my suitcase up several flights of stairs. I finally exited the station, in search of the Tower Gateway DLR station.  

Hurray for the newer stations around London!! The DLR has an escalator, in addition to the stairs, and there is even a lift (elevator). The train towards Beckton was there in the station, and I got right on, headed for The ExCel Center to meet my Florida friends at the Fox Pub. The ExCel center must be enormous, because it has TWO DLR stops, one on either end.


I had a nice burger and a Strongbow on tap for dinner. Then we all took the DLR down one stop, because we weren’t able to go through the ExCel center to walk to the other end. I walked to the Aloft hotel, which was just off the Prince Regent DLR stop, picked up my key from the front desk (I was sharing a room with Debi Chowdhury for the night), and took my stuff to the room. I don’t really remember much more about the evening, other than I was SO tired I was on auto-pilot until I fell asleep.