Travel Talk
Greetings from Jolly Old England
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006OK, so a quick summary of what I did today:
– Woke up at 6AM Eastern Daylight time.
– Went to work at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, across the street from NBC World Headquarters.
– Took a train to a plane to a train to a taxi cab and checked into the historic Langham Hotel in London at approximate 4AM EDT the following morning. Historic, by the way, is defined here as having many winding hallways between the eleva…oh, sorry – the lift and my room. I’m pretty sure I’ll never find my way off the third floor (which is really the fourth floor, since the lobby is “G”, not “1”) again.
– The Langham Hotel is across the street from BBC World Headquarters, so the whole trip is basically a tour of the world’s largest television studios.
Three interesting points about the cab ride:
1) The cabbie called me “governor.” I seriously thought they only did that in the movies.
2) A few blocks before my hotel, we drove past Baker Street. Yes, that Baker Street. According to the cabbie, 221b did not exist when Conan Doyle wrote the books, but the tourists started coming in search of it, so now there’s a small museum there with an English Bobby posted outside, just for the tourists to take pictures. The website contends that it was built in 1815, occupied by Holmes and Watson (two fictional characters) from 1881-1904, and is “faithfully maintained for posterity exactly as described in the published stories.” Tourists…
3) The cabbie also told me that BBC headquarters is where television was invented. Turns out he’s almost right. This was the site of the first mass broadcast, although the invention actually encompassed several people working over a number of years. Still, pretty cool…
I should also point out that this is the first post on this blog during which I’m really not sure if I Should Be Sleeping. On the one hand, it’s 5AM now, on the other hand, I took many small naps between the hours of 6PM last night and 2AM this morning, while flying over here. I’m not really tired, so I’m on the Internet instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I guess I’ll know for sure by this evening, when I’ll probably wind up at some English pub watching World Cup socc…oh, sorry – football.
Goodb…oh sorry, Cheers! Man, it’s going to be a long couple of days…
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