London (Day 1 and 2)

Sunday, March 22

So on Sunday, I got up to allow myself a lot of time, figuring I wouldn’t want to rush. I made it to the airport in plenty of time to meet the group. We checked in and went through security, and by that point we had about 45 minutes before boarding, so we just found some seats near the gate and chilled.

We eventually arrived at London-Gatwick, did all the necessary airport stuff and got on a bus to take us to our hotel. This, of course, took longer than expected due to traffic. We make it to the hotel – the Britannia International at Canary Wharf, around 6:15 or so, when we had a dinner reservation for 6:30 that was pushed back an hour. They’ve assigned us rooms, but we end up working it out that Caitlin, Anna, and I are in the same room. Drop off our stuff and head out to dinner at MemSaheb, and Indian restaurant in walking distance on the Thames. We’re all starving, and we don’t even actually start getting food until close to 8:30 or 9, as which point dishes just continually arrive at our table. Also, we probably annoyed the wait staff by continually asking for more pitchers of water – to be a trend on this trip. But dinner was good and we took a few pictures by the Thames, then we went back to the hotel to go to bed.

Monday, March 23

Get up early and meet the group after breakfast in the lobby to go to our first academic visit at The Telegraph. People are late for the meeting (also to be a trend), so we head out to the Underground around 8:10am. On our way there we find out that the line that serves our nearest station (the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf) is down, so we have to take the overground DLR (Docklands Light Rail). We get up to the platform for that, and every single train that comes through is packed. We’re trying to travel in a group of like 20-odd people, since none of us really know where we’re going, but we do get broken up a bit. We cram on to a train and head to a station with a nearby Tube stop (but end up turning right instead of left out of the station and have to backtrack). We make it to The Telegraph a full 45 minutes late.

At The Telegraph – England’s only remaining broadsheet newspaper – we have a talk mostly about advertising, as that’s what the guy who gave the presentation is involved in. It was interesting, but not really what I was expecting and went on for way too long – two hours even though we were late. We also had a short tour of the newsroom, which is actually a pretty cool design. There’s a central table with basically spokes coming out from it, and the editors of the sections sit nearest the middle.

After that we headed off to our group lunch at a place called Medieval Banquet – it was fish and chips served family style, and it was pretty good. Then, we hopped on a coach bus for a bus tour of London. It was all right I suppose, but I think I would have rather had the time free. Our tour guide was kind of amusing. We get dropped off at the London Eye with a bit of time to spare, but we get our tickets and hop on. It moves really slowly, and doesn’t stop as you get on or off, so we had to rush a bit to get on as we had our group split in two and pretty much the maximum occupancy of two of the cabins. Cool views indeed – unfortunately it rained just before and some during while we were up in it, but it was still impressive!

Afterward we had the rest of the evening on our own. Caitlin, Anna, Kathryn, and I went to the Notting Hill Gate area and just walked around, browsed some shops, and got some cheap pub food for dinner at the Prince Albert. Also – got a Guinness, and it made me tipsy for about 20 minutes. Then we just headed to the hotel, took showers, and went to bed.