In London

So, I’m in London now. As I blogged in twitter through my phone, the train was late for 50 minutes due to a “railway bridge damage”. When I arrived my friend Greg told me I was lucky, last time he had a two hours delay. But delayed train is good in a way that strangers can start a conversation easily by complaining the British railway, I saw couple of cases in the train.

After arrived in Kings Cross station I was starving. Although I’m not a pro-traveler, but from my experience I do know that price can be different just between inside and outside one place. For example, if you want to pee in the station it will cost you 20p, but if you do it in the toilet right before you get off the train it’s free. I got the theory, so I kept myself away from Burger King in the station and tried to find a place to feed my stomach outside the station. A place which worth to recommend here is a Chinese restaurant called ‘Chop Chop’ right opposite Kings Cross Station. It’s cheap, acceptable quality and they’ve got proper Chinese serving style. I didn’t need to speak out one word with the staffs there but managed to take order and pay, just eye contact and waving hands was sufficient.

Inside Chop Chop restaurant. The lady seems not very happy with me taking photos.

My Duck dish with rice and wanton soup.

At the station I got an oyster card, as a symbol of starting my life in London. Then I started my journey to my friend’s place, where I will be living next week before moving into our new apartment. After living in Tokyo for a year I was very confident with any tube maps in the world, including London’s. But still, it took me about 50 minutes to get to the destination. It was my first time to use DLR. Indeed, as my friend told me, it’s developed for the new area in East London, where also the banks located. While I was waiting at Poplar Station, I took a photos of the banks building as below. These two are HSBC and Bank of American, very cool, and gave me a proper welcome to London, also to my career life.

My exploration of London just began.

Tagged as: London