Dead leaves and the dirty dollar

So we have all read about it in the news. The US dollar sucks. But it really hits home when you go to the store and you buy two 20 oz. sprites that costs you 5.25 US. Colette and I came up with the brilliant idea of adding whiskey to our sprites for the Toronto-London plane ride cause only god knows how much a stiff pour on the ride would have cost us.

This is me playing poor-man's-travelling-bartender in the men's room

Ever wonder what a 10.50 US beer looks like? Now you know.

Which brings me to the question, how does a guy sleep on an airplane. Seriously, I have thought about it extensively. Sleeping sitting straight up doesn't work. The strain that my gigantic head puts upon my neck is staggering. Think of a bobble head, but worse. How about laying across two seats? Not an option. The sheer real estate my torso covers is mind boggling.

I've tried sedating myself with a decent amount of perkaset with lukewarm result. It turns out, as luck would have it, perkaset makes me chatty. This trip, however, I chose the more obvious, yet lesser applied option, whiskey. Sadly, this only made my throat burn and my breath resemble gasoline as opposed to the sweet baby's breath that I normally sport.

So we landed in London at 6:30 am London time. For those of you keeping track at home, this translates to 10:30 pm US west coast time. Immediately after landing we had to report to customs for interrogation. Why is so hard for people to understand that we quit or jobs, flew to a foreign place, don't know the exact address of the person where we will be staying with and only have a backpack to show for our possessions? After we received the 20 question drill we were allowed to leave. Although the customs lady mentioned at least twice that we would be unable to work in the UK. Clearly, they don't know me.

A slight cloud of anxiety rushed over Colette and I when we reached the pay phone. We had just retrieved our heavy luggage and we needed to call Mark and Katja before the went to work. After 10 minutes of rustling about with the phone we finally figured out how to place a call (you know those international numbers are dreadfully long). We got no answer. So we boarded the tube and headed towards Mark's flat. 45 minutes later we arrived and just so happened to catch Katja on her way out. By this time it was 9 am and Colette and I retired to bed to catch some shut eye. This initial plan was to sleep for 3 hours and then hit the tube for some sight seeing. 8 hours later we woke up and Mark took us down town for some beers and tourist type travels.

As we tasted our first true European beers, we were faced with a painful and biting stereotype. We all know how most people in the world think that American's are, to use the words of a bloke, "loud and arrogant" but they also think that our crown jewel as far as beers go is Budweiser! I agree with the aforementioned comments about being belligerent. I also informed Mark that on the whole, we are a grossly overweight people and he should probably include that in the stereotype :). I ordered a beer on separate occasions asking the barkeep what he preferred. He said that I probably wouldn't like what he had because the English beer was very heavy and warm and our American beer was so light and cold! While the beers were most excellent I still had a hard time stomaching the fact that are known for Budweiser and Coors. It seems that none of our micro's make it over the pond.

London bridge

On London bridge

These crazy old school looking cabs are everywhere

One ways and round abouts are everywhere

This is one of the bars we got a beer at.

Apparently this is quite common place ... even in November!

Some big-ass clock tower.

"The Tube"

"The beautiful Colette" She insisted on calingl this stop West MINISTER! Clearly, anyone that can read, can see otherwise!