Back to London

After our last social outing with Jodi's family it was time for our biggest biking challenge yet, getting the bikes from Kesgrave to the London bike shop.

With our rental bikes on the train from Ipswich

We started out by fitting a bike into Kevin's car and another into Brian's. The took us to Ipswich train station where the real journey began. We had to load the bikes onto the train then take the train part of the way to London then due to track repairs transfer the bikes to a bus and ride about 45 mn to another train station then unload the bikes and catch another train to the Liverpool st station. From there we had to take the bikes on the crowded subway to downtown, London then ride them about 10 blocks to the bike rental station on the Thames. It was a grueling 4 hour ordeal which entailed hauling bikes up and down crowded escalators , stairs and through ticket gates then through crowds of people. Not really what I normally call fun but it was an adventure since it was all in England and our sightseeing was in full swing.

Next time we'll rent by the day locally. The bike trip through the country was a great adventure but dealing with the bikes through London and on public transport was the only thing about the trip that we'd do differently next time around.
After dropping of the bikes we caught the tube to our new rooms at the St. David's hotel. It was a great retro small weird old school London hotel. The people there were cool and there were great pub, restaurants, stores and such right next door. There was also a really nice park right out front. It was a great spot. Bukowski would have liked it.

We started on a few pints at the SawyerArms pub. I then went next door and bought a big Cuban cigar from the local deli/quickshop and fired it up. After thir own run in with public transport, Kevin and Brian showed up and we had a few with them . We then planned to meet up later after they checked into their room at another hotel.

We then had to get food. Jodi wanted Indian, after waking around for a while, we decided to eat at the one 50 feet from our room. It was definitely some of the best Indian food that I've ever had. By that time it was getting late and by the time we started drinking with Brian and Kevin. It was10:00. Then 11:00 was last call. Since we'd just started they wanted to keep drinking so we went via black cab to Picadilly Circus and made our way to their favorite spot, a three level disco, bar, live music place , O'Neal's, We drank there til two. We then got a cab ride home with a crazy London cab driver.



2:00am +
Bed time...

Jodi outside Sawyer Arms pub in London.

Traveling back to London via train.