My plan today was to take a train from Paddington Station to Windsor and checkout Windsor Castle. I headed to “Rock & Sole Plaice” (recommended by the concierge) for some fish & chips before heading out. While there I realized that I’d have to take a river tour to see the Thames Barriers. Since I thought I’d enjoy that more than Windsor Castle I changed plans.

When charging my lunch my credit card was declined so back to the hotel to contact the cc company and see what was up. I found out that I had hit my limit, due to (as I later found out) that the hotel places a credit hold on my account for the likely cost of my stay (when I checkout they release the hold and then issue the actual charge). The little problem with this is that this effectively maxes out my cc, even if I had no other charges from the trip. Hmmm, looks like I’ll be using cash for the next couple of days, at least until my payment for the previous month made last week and a transfer from my bank account to the cc account clears.

I ended up taking a river tour from Westminster Pier to Greenwich. It was only after I bought my ticket that I found out that they don’t do journeys past Greenwich to the Thames Barriers so I didn’t get to see the Barriers after all. Oh well.

After getting back to Westminster Pier I took a journey on the London Eye - think of it as the world’s largest Ferris Wheel. Each car can hold 25 people and except for folks with disabilities it does not stop to let you on or off. It travels approx. 1 mile / hour and takes about 30 minutes total (if you checkout my photos you can see that at the beginning of the ride it was daylight and by the time it ended dusk had fallen).

Security is not what I’m used to living in the US - before you queue up to get in you get waved over by a guy with a wand and patted down. As we were descending I could see that after the car in front of us was emptied two guys enter and use mirrors on sticks to check that nothing was left in the overhead lighting panel.

Additionally as you can tell from the photos, I was taking photos of the London Eye itself - what can I say, I'm a guy and I found it interesting (and I thought my son would as well [1]). I wonder what the odds are if I looked Middle-Eastern (and perhaps was in the US?) and was taking pictures of such a structure that security would’ve wanted to have a word with me?

-------

[1] I'm sure my daughter will find it interesting as well, before she turns her attention back to her Nintendogs. :-)

-------

My journey back to Westminster station was cold - and I was wearing a long-sleeve henley, a sweater, the jacket I normally wear in Austin in the winter and a ski cap. What impressed me was that I saw folks wearing quite a bit less than I was...

Dinner was at “The Real Greek Souvlaki & Bar” where I had Greek food which was somewhat familiar to me but tasted nothing like I’ve gotten in Austin - very intense and very good. The souvlaki had chunks of lamb, not the thinly sliced “lamb spam” which I’m used to seeing.

It dawned on me while there that the restaurants I’ve been to are all small i.e. maybe fifteen tables tops, approx. two people acting as servers (e.g. the hostess and manager) and maybe two guys in the kitchen (cooking and cleaning dishes). I chatted with the manager as I was paying and he told me that a small restaurant can generate approx. 75% of the cash flow of a larger restaurant since the menu at a smaller restaurant is more simple and they can thus have higher table turnover. I think he said a larger restaurant will have 150 - 200 “covers” per night compared to 100 - 125 covers at a smaller restaurant.

Then it was off to “The Crown” for another shandy. I asked the bartender if she could make it with Bass (what I had originally read fifteen years ago a shandy was made with) - she blew me away when she told me she had never heard of Bass. I wonder if Bass is to the UK what Corona is to Mexico...

Pictures from the day here.