London England

We flew from the Netherlands to England on Tuesday flying into London Stansted airport. From there we rented a car. I booked the car the night before as you can always get it cheaper on-line. The problem was that by the time I hit “Ok”, it was a little after midnight and so the “next day” ended up being Wednesday. When we arrived at the Kiosk, they wanted quite a bit more because they didn’t have any small cars for Tuesday and I booked for Wednesday. The competition helped us out though and we ended up paying a little more than the on-line booked price.

The car we rented was a Peugeot 107 which is a cheeky little urban city car. It was just big enough for two people and our luggage. We rented it to go to Foxton where our warehouse is. That was the first time we visited this warehouse, since we have only had them since last December. We were impressed and it was good to see how they do things. We then drove to Wembley where our hotel was. Janet always does the driving and I do the navigating. There were a couple of stressful moments when we drove London, on the “wrong” side, during rush hour on “round-abouts” and roads that originally were designed for horse and carriage. They even call a two-lane road a dual carriage way.The roundabouts are really interesting as they can be quite a few lanes at one time, but there are no white lines to let you know which lane you should stay in. Most people who live here, won’t drive in London. We went to return the car to another location but when we got there, they were already closed for the day. Fortunately we had a place that we could park it for the night.

London was mostly work for us. First trip was to Trafalgar square, which is where our bank is. We also visited some of the health stores that carried our product. The stores were all really receptive, which of course, was encouraging.

We did manage to go to a live theatre production called Ghost and ended up getting tickets that had us in the nose bleed section; about 8 stories (25m) up and about 200ft (60m) back. It ended up being a very good show and was well done. The section of town where the theatre was, Piccadilly, had many theatres and reminded me of Broadway in New York. It was crazy how busy it was on the tube at 10pm on a Thursday night.

London is a very lively city with lots of people and energy. Whites seem to be in a minority everywhere we went. The weather was great and we never seemed to be caught in any sort of rain. The public transit is amazing and it is unbelievable the number of subways, trains and buses. It was very easy to move from one section of the city to the other.

Our hotel in Wembley ended up being a dump. It is hard to find a place to stay, in big cities like London, without paying a fortune. So I found this place but when we arrived, the room didn’t look as advertised. The room was about 8x9ft (2.5-2.7m). It was close to the train/subway and so it worked out. I have a motto; “They all look the same when your eyes are closed.” We did survive the hotel, it gave us a laugh, and we saved money and have another memory. What more do you want?
We left on Friday for Birmingham which is about 200km North of London. We went there to participate in the Pharmacy Show on Sunday and Monday. I went to the ticketeer and he wanted £46 for each of us. I saw the tickets on-line for a lot less and we ended up taking the slower train (2 transfers) for £20. It took longer but the old Dutch wallet just wouldn’t crack open far enough to ride the high speed train. If only I would have packed a crow bar (koeien voet), then we might have experienced the luxury ride.

We set up our show and are now ready to have two long days meeting an estimated 6,000