Time to move along. Budapest has been great, but it is time to hit London. The
best think about hitting London is that we are going there more to sit inspect hotels and visit the friends than tour. We have been there enough times and visited every museum and cultual site. In other words, a relaxing time in London awaits.
The last shot
ever from our Budapest hotel room.
As Barbie checks out, I take some pictures of the Four Seasons Gresham Palace lobby.
Barbie checking out. Even the floor is gorgeous in this hotel lobby.
It is raining today, harder than we have seen. The rain god of Budapest has been kind, giving us a sunny day yesterday and crummy weather today to make us not sorry to be moving along.
For some reason, I felt like you needed more proof of the weather. As if the shot of umbrellas was not enough. I do not want you suspecting that I asked a bunch of people in front of our hotel to open their umbrellas just for that shot, and then they put them away and walked around in sunshine after the ruse.
Airport time. The signs around Budapest airport all refer to it as Ferenc Liszt Airport; Ferenc Liszt is Hungarian for Franz Liszt their great composer. They recently changed the name of this airport to honor Liszt's 200th Birthday. It must have been very recent, because he was born on October 22, 1811. No wonder nobody refers to this as Franz Liszt Airport. It would be like if we renamed LAX to
Paul Lynde Airport. We would keep calling it LAX.
Budapest Airport is modern and efficient. Their security area, which I did not photograph because Barbie makes sure that I know to
not mess around with airport security areas, was one of the best and most efficient that I have seen.
Another modern airport that understands how tall spaces affect human beings.
This little lamb almost made the cut. This trip has yet to see an addition to Barbie's collection of travel buddies.
When I looked at the food court, I could not bring myself to eat KFC or Burger King. Instead...
Home grown Hungarian noodles with beef.
Beats by Dr. Dre. Everywhere. Branding headphones by Monster Cable with Dr. Dre's name might be the smartest marketing move in the last decade.
Our ride to London.
Barbie adored this woman's hair.
Our path to London.
Something unique happened on this flight. For the first time, Barbie tried playing a game on the iPhone. She chose skeeball... and she declared war on my top ten scores list.
See that? Barbie not only
stole three of the top ten spots, she
tied the best score of all time!
Hello England. I would call this London, but I am pretty sure that Heathrow is technically outside the city limits.
As far as I know, Heathrow is the only airport I have seen that pretends the customs line is a physical border of the country. I adore this idiosyncrasy.
We actually witnessed two men in their 50's get into a bit of a scrum. (It is London, thus I call it a scrum.) The shorter guy was going off in his heavy Irish accent (I think Irish, he was not in the line for UK citizens) at a somewhat taller, bigger guy, "Yew cutt in loyne and then curse in front of mye wyfe?" He kept repeating that, and the other guy kept trying to ignore him. At moments they looked eye to eye, the bigger testing to see if the little guy had the guts to throw a punch while in a line where they can literally refuse to let you into the country. Barbie told the woman processing our passports, and they sent some officials to check it out. Everyone working in passport control was quite delighted to actually have something different to think about.
Welcome to London. Full disclosure: I was getting a shot of the airplane landing and did not even know I was also getting the
Welcome to London sign. Once again, it pays to never set your camera down.
London housing. We do not have anything quite like it in the colonies.
We arrived at the Four Seasons London at Park Lane.
Barbie checking in. As odd as this may sound, I am not sure if I have ever had pictures of a hotel check-out and hotel check-in from the same day. I normally do not even take pictures of these events. In this case, both Four Seasons hotels have such lovely lobbies that I made the effort.
Our room features one of the longest hallways ever seen in a hotel.
Score! This huge patio is ours and only ours.
Minutes after getting here, even before unpacking, Barbie got the craving for the Hard Rock Café's pig meat. SInce the original, very first, where it all started Hard Rock is literally at the end of our street, this is a no-brainer.
Who does not know the story of the Hard Rock? In 1971, two Americans living in London, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett, longed for American style burgers. They had no choice but to open their own restaurant, and it quickly became a favorite of London's rock musicians who had enjoyed American food while on tour. This first Hard Rock Cafe opened its doors to the public on June 14, 1971, making today's visit very close to the restaurant's 40th Birthday.
The memorabilia thing began in 1979 when Eric Clapton wanted his regular booth marked for him, and the owners suggested he give them a guitar to hang on the wall above this favorite booth. Pete Townshend soon gave a guitar as well, and the whole thing happened naturally.
Now... why I did not get a shot of the
first guitar is beyond me as I type this. Maybe it is in the museum across the street, where you would not know that I was handed one of Jimi Henrdix's guitars to hold for a photograph in 2006. Had there been a Waste in 2006, you would see many wonderful London photographs.
Barbie's pulled pork nachos, affectionately given the moniker
pig meat by a Hard Rock Rome waitress in 2009.
I got the BBQ chicken sandwich.
We had two awesome waitresses, but I only got a shot of the one with the fire-red and bright orange hair for you. She asked where we were from, and Barbie said, "Los Angeles." The waitress replied, "Oh good. I'm so glad you didn't just say America."
I suspect a political discussion was held and unity found between us and this waitress in the spaces between those words.
Shockingly, there was a huge line to get into the Hard Rock store and museum today. Maybe something new has been put on display for the 40th Anniversary?
Quandary. It is cool to see a London taxi covered by the Union Jack. And
London's calling is a clever slogan, no doubt about that. But is this an affront to the ethos of The Clash? Clearly the apostrophe-s changes the meaning a bit, but I also suspect that this also means that the surviving members of The Clash were not paid a royalty. It is official. This ad is abhorrent.
Time to swap the European plug for the Uk plug. The UK should be ashamed of their plug, or their
mains. It is too large and silly.
The television is on the wall directly facing the bed, making the design of this hotel room a success.
But the viewing options before sleep on the television were not as appealing as those on our DVR at home. Time for slingbox.
Until tomorrow.
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