Today we woke up early and had tea in the room while Kat cooked eggs and I worked on the computer. I double-checked out flight home and noticed that we'd been downgraded from sleeping pods to regular business class for our cross-Atlantic portion. The plane they had us on was smaller. Kat urged me to talk them into getting us back on a larger plane so we could have the "goo-filled pods" again.
I found flights with larger planes and pods available for that day so I had some ammunition for the call. I got in contact with a customer service rep and only had to argue with her for a little while to get the flight and seats we wanted. Now we are back on our original flight plan for the first leg of the trip, but we still come back on a later flight from Newark. After that I uploaded some pictures and did some blogging. Kat finished reading a book. I think it's the second one so far on this trip.
We sat down to plan our next couple days together. First we made reservations for dinner at the finest Indian restaurant in town, Amaya, for the evening. After that we checked the weather and noticed it would be thundering in London tomorrow. It would be a perfect day to get out of town so we looked into a train trip to Scotland. Kat wanted to see Hadrian's Wall, but we didn't see anything decent for that. We did find many suggestions to spend time in Edinburgh. After looking into it we got very excited about the idea, even though there was supposed to be a very big festival in town this month. We booked our train tickets for early the next morning and then moved on to planning the rest of our day.
Kat wanted to see Notting Hill, because she likes that movie so much, so we headed out there. We wandered around and ate lunch at Bella Italia, a chain of restaurants a little bit like Olive Garden that we see all over. It was good, but we had to move inside after a couple sat right next to us and started smoking. After lunch we wandered around Notting Hill and took a couple pictures of what we thought were scenes from the movie.
We ended up near Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We took a stroll down the main boulevard and jumped on the carousel for fun. We walked all around the park until we started to get tired from our last couple of long days so we decided to head back to our apartment for a nap. We ended up at Hyde Park Corner across from Asley House and found a tube station there.
Back at the apartment, Kat went to sleep while I uploaded pictures and worked on the blog. I had part of one of my beers until I got too tired and took a short nap. Kat's alarm went off and she noticed that her watch battery was dying. We needed her watch for the train trip tomorrow so we added batteries to the shopping list. We got changed into nicer clothes and took the tube to Knightbridge. From there we walked to Amaya.
The restaurant was very nice and we felt a little under-dressed. Overall we've noticed that Londonites tend to dress a little sharper than most. You don't see many jeans and t-shirt except for tourists like us. Amaya was even nicer, with many men wearing ties or jackets. I brought a jacket with me, but I hadn't thought to wear it this evening. They had a strict policy against cameras in the dining room, so I was not able to get pictures of us inside. The food was good and arrived in eight small courses. Kat filled up quickly and I put forth a heroic attempt. We were both stuffed by the end of it. As we ate we discussed options for our costumes this coming Halloween. The bill was extravagant, but it was too late to complain.
After dinner we tried to find a watch battery, but Harrod's was closed as were the other nearby shops. We took the tube back to Earl's Court and went to our trusty Tesco. We found a battery, but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to open Kat's watch and make sure it was the right kind. A checker called the team leader and Shahidul came to our rescue. He had the perfect screwdriver for the job, but he sort of took over. I got the impression he didn't think very highly of women. He took the watch from Kat and set to work. He got the back off easily enough but almost broke it trying to wrench the old battery out of place. Kat tried to point out the additional screws holding it in place, but he didn't seem to listen. Once he got all the screws off and tore an important looking piece of plastic out he got the new battery in place and then promptly dropped a screw. I was holding the others. The small screw hit the floor and bounced out of sight.
Now we had Shahidul, Kat, and a nearby stranger trying to find a tiny screw on a dirty grocery store floor. Kat finally just pressed her hand flat on the floor in the hopes of getting it to stick to her, and it worked. The checker lady congratulated her and said, "Wow, that was smart," and then I overheard Shahidul mutter, "Not smart, lucky" under his breath. This guy was really getting on my nerves, but he was the wielder of the magic screwdriver and I did not want to offend him. We had both tried to get him to leave the tool with us, but he refused. The operation continued to go awry. Shahidul couldn't get the tiny screws back into place until Kat finally used her long and narrow fingernails to act as a guide. Together they got everything screwed back into place and we were able to pay up and leave. The watch worked, but now it had no sound. We couldn't use it as an alarm clock anymore.
We returned home and got our stuff ready for another early morning before our day trip to Edinburgh. We set the room's alarm clock and my DS as a backup and went to sleep.
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