Day 13 - Train back to London

Friday we took the train from Edinburgh back to London. We arrived at King's Cross station about 3:00 PM, and walked a block to the hotel that I'd booked for that one night, a Comfort Inn.

I'd purposely gone a little cheap that night, and the family was a little disappointed with the hotel. It was cozy beyond the point of being cramped. We dumped our bags, and headed out for one last bit of London.

We split up. Nancy had had almost no chance to shop, so she headed for the High Street. The boys and I headed back to our favorite, the Science Museum. We agreed to meet after closing at our old stomping grounds, the Googe Street tube station.

Sean, Scott, and I timed our arrival at the Science Museum perfectly - at 4:30 PM each day, they allow visitors in for the last 90 minutes without paying admission. I made a deal with the boys - we'd spend 45 minutes covering the third floor, which we'd missed the first time. Then we spent the final 45 minutes until closing time, conveying grain in the kids corner in the basement.

When they threw us all out of the museum, we got on the tube and met up with Nancy near our old apartment. We'd chosen that neighborhood because there were still lots of restaurants we hadn't gotten to. We went into Bertorellis, an upscale Italian place, and had a really fine dinner for our last night in London.

After dinner, even though it was past eight o'clock, it was still light out in the summer, and nobody relished returning to our little hotel room. Nancy and I couldn't exactly go out night-clubbing with the boys in tow. We wound up walking to the Internet cafe where I'd been checking my e-mail from London.

Internet Cafe doesn't really do justice to this place: "Easy Everything". They bill themselves as a chain of the biggest Internet Cafes in the world, and I'd have to agree. There are five locations in London, and a dozen or so in other European cities, including one in Edinburgh. This one, a block and a half from our apartment at Scala House, had literally 500 terminals. This place is open 24/7, and it had plenty of customers when I'd gone there before dawn, in my wandering-the-city-jetlagged early days in London.

The place was easy to use, and cheap. At the front door was a cash register, where you'd open an account for £1. They'd give you a small ticket with your anonymous account name on it - in London I was "DC9S0C". You find an empty computer, type in the user name, make up a password, and you're online.

While you were using their computers, there was a little meter at the bottom of the screen showing how much cash was left in the account. The display also showed the current rate for online time, which varied according to demand. When we were there at dinnertime, £1 would last for 40 minutes (that was probably prime time on the Internet). In the early morning, £1 was good for four hours. That first pound lasted me the entire time I was in London! I'd had to use a different account in Edinburgh, though, so my expense for e-mail was £2 for the trip.

So that last night we checked our e-mail, then let the boys burn off the last few pence in the account looking at Pokemon sites. As we were hanging out, I noticed an Oriental guy in the row across from us. He had a headphone/microphone on, plugged into the terminal. He was sitting there alone, speaking Chinese. I think he was making a long distance phone call on the Internet, probably speaking with someone around the world, at £1.50/hour!

That's about all we did in London. We returned to our tiny room. It turned out to work fine - it made us very efficient about getting ready for bed. We took showers in order, and as each person was in the shower, that made enough room to open the proper suitcase, lay out jammies and clothes for the plane trip home, then close the suitcase so the next person could get in the shower. We were all tired enoght after two weeks to sleep well. The room was clean and modern, and the contental breakfast the next morning was plentiful.

All in all it was a great vacation, mostly because Sean and Scott travelled so well. We were already wondering how soon we could return... Or should we go to Paris next time?

The End.