Europe - Trip 1

Day 4 - January 11, 2002

On the road below the Chiltern Hundreds

Tom left at 4 AM to get to Kendal in time for the job and we soundly slept through it all. We lazed around until about 10:00 and then took off in the Alfa Romeo 145 that Tom very kindly lent to us. We did a couple of short runs through the countryside, stopping to take some pictures before heading up to Oxford for a quick wander. Didn't have much time there so basically walked a couple of streets, saw some sites in the cold, stopped for lunch and then hopped back in the car for the drive back to London.

The trip from Oxford to London normally takes about 1.5 hours to complete if you know what you're doing; for us it took a solid 3.5 hours as we got lost a couple of times and ended up driving right through the center of London during Friday rush hour. It becomes very disconcerting to drive past Harrod's in this crazy traffic, be positive that you're going at least in the correct general direction, only to find yourself back up by Harrod's 45 minutes later. We did see some amazing sites on this drive though as we drove through Piccadily, along Hyde park, through Leicester Square, Earl's Court, Kensington (twice), over both Albert and Battersea bridges before making through Clapham Common to Harriet's place.

We quickly parked, got changed and hopped the tube to Piccadily again to meet Harriet and her very nice fella (Andrew) for drinks and dinner. Another very nice fusion Italian place with a better choice of wine this time and then a short cab ride home.

foggy bits in the photos - a pattern will emerge...