As seen in Trafalgar Square.
I asked one of the London Ambassador people about it, and she wasn’t a fan; A big bronze pigeon would have been more appropriate in her view.

Breakfast hit an early snag when I got to the lobby & saw the throng of people milling about in the restaurant, talking, allegedly queuing, and generally getting in each others way. There was an actual look of relief on the face of the lady working the maitre d’s desk (is that spelled right? and should it be Madame d’ ?) when I said I had time, and could just come back later.
She suggested 9am, as three were three tour groups clogging up the buffet.

I figured I’d go for a walk, see what the other end of the ExCeL centre looks like, and maybe check out where the other DLR station (Custom House for ExCeL) near here is, in case it’s closer than the one I used (Royal Victoria).

Other plans for today include the non-intensive sort of tourism, so that I can stop at any point if The Jetlags catch up with me;

1. heading out along the route I’ll have to take the day I go to Dublin, so that there are fewer moments of “Where the f*** do I go now?” while carrying the big black bag
2. conveniently, that’ll put me in easy Tubing distance (not sure that’s a real word in this context) of Forbidden Planet, assuming it was the bookstore I was recommend, and not an actual planet.
   I had the same confusion with Planet Of The Apes, as it happens.
   Didn’t pack a book this trip, as I’m half-way through a brick of Stephen Ericsson, and didn’t want to lug the thing the rest of the trip if I finished it on the plane, so a bookstore would work out nicely.
3. from there, I’m thinking of heading riverward, to see whether there’s anything touristy, possibly involving boats. There is, after all, a river there, so it’d be a shame not to look at it, or to see whether I can find the place doing amphibious vehicle tours.

Heathrow Terminal (probably) 3 is, from what I’ve seen, pretty much like any other big chunk of airport.
Go this way if you’re transiting, that way if you aren’t, yes the hallways do go for bloody miles, and here’s a queue to stand in.

Getting into the country was pretty simple, and a shorter procedure than the one at LAX; Then again, I think they’re actively looking to catch you out at LAX*, whereas all they wanted to know here was “On Holiday?”, so the line moved pretty quickly.
(* in 2013, the border control person asked me who I knew in Indianapolis, which kind of baffled me as a question. presumably my incoherent listing of a few names was enough to convince her that I wasn’t lying)

Baggage claim, conveniently, had my bag nice & obvious on the conveyor by the time I got there, and the crowds had died down enough that getting to it was easy; I’ve had times when the crowds are so packed that you can’t get to your bag, even when you can see it.

Following the signs led me to the Heathrow Express, which, conveniently, arrived at the platform pretty much at the same time I did, for a very quick transition to comfy seating & complimentary wifi. They have ticket-selling people who seem to have experience in dealing with the tired, jetlagged & confused, which made that process a whole lot easier.

Paddington Station is enormous.
Not in the same way as, say, Chicago, which had these enormous echoing halls you walk through to get to the trains; Paddington has a huge covered space, with a glass & iron arched roof, and it’s filled with trains & people & stuff.
A chap on the Heathrow Express platform saw me reading the signs, chuckled at my comment about getting my bearings, and pointed me at the end of the station where I could get an OysterCard. It took me a while to find the Transport For London … Not really a kiosk or store; It was a window in the wall of the access to the underground, but they were nice enough to explain the basic idea (Tag On at the first station, Tag Off at the last one, so much like the TransPerth system. Or perhaps TransPerth is much like Oyster?) and tell me that the card can be topped-up. (there’s a note about it printed on the little card wallet, so presumably there’s a decent number of people confusing them for being multi-trip ticket equivalents?)

I’d printed out the instructions on how to get to the WorldCon venue from their website, which included a very helpful annotated tube map. Unfortunately, the closure of access from Paddington to the Bakerloo Line meant that I had to engage with understanding the network slightly earlier than I’d planned, though signs pointing me towards taking the Hammersmith & City to get to the Bakerloo line at Baker St. eventually made me realise that I could do just that, and since Baker Street was a point of change on the route to the venue anyway, it’d all be OK.
It did take a while to find the appropriate platform, but I’ll be taking the blame for that myself, as I don’t think I paid enough attention to the signs. Got there eventually by reversing course along the Heathrow Express terminal, where I’d seen a “Bakerloo via Hammersmith & City” sign, which led me to the right place.

Wow, those platforms are narrow.
The above ground piers at Paddington were pretty big, presumably because of the number of people using them & the fact that they weren’t dug out, whereas the platforms on the underground kind of required that people stand against the wall to make it easier for others to get past. So, basically, manners.

Once on the tube network, it was all pretty simple, and I met a couple of other WorldCon attendees, Bob & Brigitte from California, standing waiting for the Docklands Light Rail at Canning Town; They’d already asked someone which train they needed, and while I’d figured it out from the helpful schematics, it was nice to hear someone confirm it.

Once I got to the appropriate station, I didn’t know which direction to go in to get to the hotel, so I climbed a set of stairs and looked for water, which worked surprisingly well, and the walk to the Ibis was uneventful.
There are a number of real estate agencies around here, which seems odd to me, and a few convenience stores or mini-supermarkets, which will be very convenient.

Hotel room at the Ibis London ExCeL Docklands is actually a bit nicer than I was expecting, with both working and quiet air conditioning (It’s a bit muggy here, especially on the Underground), and an unusually long breakfast-serving period starting at 4am for the early-riser set (which will be useful on the day I catch a train to Dublin, as I’ll have to get across the city during a weekday morning with a bag, so an early start seems like a good idea), free wifi, and a surprisingly comfy bed.

I figured that, after showering, I was probably going to fall asleep for hours, so I wandered out first to grab a bottle of water and at least look at the ExCeL Centre; Ended up being asked for directions to the train station by a group of somewhat lost Welsh girls, who weren’t sure where they were in relation to anything else. I decided not to tell them just how little local knowledge I had, pointed them towards the closest DLR station (according to the map, at least, and it looked a bit easier to find than the one I’d used; “Go that way until you hit the building, turn left, go that way until you hit a railway line”), and they left proclaiming that I was a ‘Lovely Man’.
Amusingly, to me at least, they were a mix of Asian & African looking people, all with strong Welsh accents.

Eventually a shower happened, followed by going to sleep at about 6:30pm when I realised that I couldn’t keep a coherent train of thought going, even internally; Random fragments of other stuff kept interfering.
I had planned to only take an hour-long nap, but that … didn’t happen.
Can’t even remember for sure whether the alarm I set went off; I think it did, but I don’t remember getting up to turn it off, just the ‘having gotten up’ part.

Getting to the æroport was fairly uneventful, and the Airbus (bus going to airport, not plane at airport) was pulling up as I got to the stop, which was very convenient.
As a result, I got to the airport VASTLY early, so I’m killing time, as it were. The people of Emirates were nice enough to open their check-in counters for all the days flights, so I am, at least, not lugging all of my luggage around.

I next see my luggage in London (I hope), a good number of hours from now.
Somewhere north of 30 hours, in fact.

— time passes —

This is a very nice aircraft; The walnut trim around the windows & on the wee handle for the blind is particularly classy.

In-flight entertainment includes cameras in the nose & up on the tail, to show where we’re going, a camera looking down, to see where we are (while waiting for push-away, I was having trouble working out what the hatch shown on-screen was. I think it was the roof of the plane moving vehicle, based on how it moved around, and a bunch of movies, including Snowpiercer, which I’ve been wanting to see.

Currently flying over cloud & ocean.

— tick tock tick tock —

OK, I’ve watched all but the last 20 minutes of Snowpiercer, which was … violent. Also good, and very odd.
I’ll watch the rest on the next leg, as we’ve been transferred off the plane at Sydney for a crew change, and presumably to get more passengers.
I’m not complaining if we don’t get more passengers; I had a three-seat row to myself for the Auckland to Sydney bit, so I’m hoping that’ll continue for Sydney-Dubai.

— tic tic tic tic —

Yeah, not so much on the row-to-myself front.
Also, Sydney to Dubai is a long-ass flight. I knew it’d be a bunch of hours, but hadn’t realised just what that’d be like as the second flight of a journey.
I did finish watching Snowpiercer, and watched Frozen, and a chunk of Captain America 2, and probably slept for a while.

Dubai Airport is very big.
Bloody enormous, in fact.
Not enough seating near the gates though.
Getting between the different concourses was pretty simple, and there’s a little train, though I can see it being a nightmare if you had a tight timeframe between flights.

— more time passes —

As I’d hoped, the daytime flight gave me the chance to Ooh & Ahh over interesting scenery, as seen from very high up. Figuring out where the hell the plane was took some doing at times, and demonstrates that I probably should have looked up where the borders are, or put a map on my phone or something.

The Emirates planes are very nice, and cabin crew seemed to spend the entire time handing people things. Hot towels. Meals. Bringing around a tray of drinks in the middle of a 14-hour flight. That sort of thing.
It might just be me being too fat, but the bathrooms seem really small, even for an aircraft toilet.
On the other hand, they do sell duty-free items on the plane. Not run into that before.
Also, quite a range of TV & Movies. They even had episodes of “Taxi” on the Auckland to Dubai bit.

I think, were I to do this flight route again, I’d break my trip in Dubai.
A 19:45 trip, broken with a stop in Australia, is long, but it’s OK.
Add on another 7:30 trip immediately after that, and it’s a hideous length of time to spend on a plane. I get a four-hour Dubai stop on the way back, so I’ll have to take better advantage of the delights of DBX. Buy Starbucks, perhaps?

— ding ding —

Arrival in London was delayed by about a half-hour, all of which was spent in well-lit cloud, so the cameras showed nothing. Nice views of houses & the like on final approach to the runway.

Not really a lot of trip reporting as of yet, as the trip hasn’t quite started.

My bags are as packed as I can get them the day before a trip, and neither is very close to the weight limit, which strikes me as a good thing.

This year’s convention plans involve LonCon 3 (WorldCon in London) and Shamrokon. (The European convention, in Dublin, Ireland)
There will be some touristing, a visit to Chris in Essex (I met Chris at Gen Con in 2012, and despite having met me already, he was willing to do so again 🙂 ), and a trip to Zurich via Paris to catch with Jono & see whatever there is to see in Switzerland.
Heavily-armed cuckoo-clocks made of chocolate, maybe?

That may not be too far out; The Lindt factory is in Zurich, and I’m told they do tours. There’s also the Guiness Brewery tour in Dublin, and I’m sure I can find something to do in London, …

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