Fall in London

We've arrived in London for the Clash of the NFL Titans tomorrow afternoon. We had a bit of a bumpy flight leaving Aberdeen yesterday evening, and then spent a good 45 minutes circling over London, so we were quite knackered by the time we reached our hotel. The endless circling would normally have been more of a sore point, but we got a terrific view of the city, all lit up and colorful, that was quite enchanting. London always hits us with a sequence like that - showing us something cool and appealing, making us think that life in the big city wouldn't be too bad, and then we run into an obvious negative, like the insane crowds outside the Portobello Road market, and we're back to being quite happy to spend a little more time in Aberdeen.

The day started quite well, as Fiona was not only clever enough to book us a room at a great hotel in the middle of Kensington, but also got us "club" access - which means we can duck off into this small glass-walled room for breakfast or drinks and not have to deal with the rest of the hotel riff-raff. We wear our elitist label with pride. Breakfast was great and we followed it up with a tour of the hotel gardens, marvelling at the huge maple leaves falling from the central tree and wondering what caused them to feel they needed to put up several signs asking people to "Please respect our shrubbery".

We decided to try and get in to see the Natural History Museum, which everyone has been telling us is well worth the effort. When we arrived and saw the queue snaking out of the building, around the drive, into the garden, back out onto the drive... we turned tail and ran. We ended up in Kensington Gardens, on the other side of Hyde Park. THe fall colours were amazing. We strolled around the gardens, enjoying the weather and the foliage.

For lunch we headed to the well-reviewed Churchill Arms pub. It turns out that in the back of the pub is a little Thai restaurant, so we sat down for some pad thai. It came to the table absolutely reeking of something not entirely edible, but we decided to give it a go and ended up quite enjoying it.

We were wandering through Notting Hill, trying (and failing) to get into the market, and decided instead to head for Holland Park. We arrived in the park just in time to be greeted by a rain squall. Thankfully the trees still had enough leaves to offer us some shelter, and we ended up waiting out the rain on a small bench. I won't lie, there may have been some snogging.

We met up with some friends for dinner and are now looking forward to another good night's sleep. Our room has proven itself to have all the requirements - good and dark, with the right temperature. Hopefully we're a little smarter than yesterday, when we stayed up too late after being caught up with a TV movie about an old Canadian heavy metal band called Anvil. They had a little success in the 80's, but are now all in their 50's and still clinging to the dream. I don't quite know if it was the sincerity with which they spoke of their dreams, or the background Canadiana (which made us more than a little homesick), but by the end we were hooked, rooting for the band to find what they were looking for. I guess it's a true-story, slightly less comical version of Spinal Tap. Neither of us like heavy metal music, but we both enjoyed it.