Tagtravel

Our weekend in London in numbers

  • 20 – cost, in pounds of our return train fare (each)
  • 15.1 – miles walked (above the surface)
  • 16 – painkillers popped by John (who hurt his back on the way to the train station in Leeds)
  • 7 – cost, in pounds, of a sundae in the Haagen Das restaurant (worth it)
  • 5 – drinks drunk at The Chandos pub
  • 4 – doughnuts eaten (between us)
  • 24 – amount of doughnuts bought by the woman behind us in the queue, stocking up for her six hour journey to Devon (she is our new hero)
  • 2 – meals eaten in Chinatown
  • 5 – amount of times (out of 11) that Big Ben rang while we were standing DIRECTLY underneath it before we actually realised it was ringing
  • 3 – scarves bought: one pink/blue, one turquoise and one green/orange
  • 7 – cost, in pounds, of a small bottle of beer and half-a-coke at the Hippodrome bar while watching La Cirque
  • 10 – inches, the diameter of the tennis racket that Captain Frodo of La Clique squeezed himself through
  • 1 – number of joints he had to dislocate to be able to do that
  • 0 – the amount of laughs the ‘Viva Croydon’ song in La Cirque elicited from us
  • 32.50 – cost, in pounds, of stalls tickets for Spamalot from the tkts booth in Leicester Square
  • 2 – the amount of people who pushed in front of me in the drinks buying queue at the Spamalot interval
  • 2 – museums visited
  • 3.50 – cost, in pounds, of our British Museum guide book
  • 2 – time, in minutes, spent looking at British Museum guide book
  • 10 – tube stations visited
  • 2 – maximum time, in rounded-up minutes, that we had to wait for any tube train (probably more like 90seconds)
  • 6 – number of times I jokingly complained about the waiting times on British public transport when arriving on a platform exactly as a train arrived
  • 3 – amusing overheards*
  • 1 – potential punfolio submissions about ghee

* #1 – “Did you tell her about the death? Oh good.”
#2 – “If we all thought like that, we’d all live in poverty.”
#3 – something in Spanish which we didn’t understand but accompanied by a spanking motion

Berlin

Berlin - from the map in the main meeting room of the former Stasi HQI went to Berlin with Team Brightbox last week (1st-5th September) and as much as KLM conspired to make it otherwise, I had a great time.

It took almost 24 hours to get there with the quote-unquote “Reliable Airline” because the flight between Leeds-Bradford and Amsterdam was delayed, causing us to miss the last connecting flight onto Berlin. Cue four tired, sweaty hysterical people trying to maximise our return at a “participating bar and restaurant” at the airport after being given “we’re sorry we messed up” vouchers worth 10euros a piece (we scored two glasses of champagne, a “luxury” mojito, a cola beverage and two giant slices of chocolate truffle cake). We then had an indescribable meal at the airport hotel and about three hours sleep before catching our onward flight to Paris at dawn the next morning.

Paris? Yes, because all the Amsterdam-Berlin flights were booked up so we had to go via Paris. And we found out when we finally reached Berlin that my suitcase liked it in France so much, they decided to stay there for an extra day. Sigh.
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