Out of Africa, Into England

I arrived in London this morning after a 12 hour flight, which was actually very easy on me as far as jet lag (there is only a 1 hour time difference between London and Cape Town) but not as far as weather. Africa was hot, and my body got very used to sunshine and 80 degree days, as evidenced by the wonderful tan I have (accompanied, though, by the horrendous tan lines on my arms, legs and feet). England, on the other hand, is cold and blustery and the sun came out for 5 minutes this morning and, from what I understand, I shouldn't expect to see it again any time soon.

The weather isn't the only thing that has turned sour lately, though. I have hit 2 fairly large, unexpected bumps in the road in the last few weeks. First, my ATM info was swiped at some point, which led my bank to freeze the account. That is all well and good, and the thieves only got a few hundred bucks out of my account. Unfortunately, even though it is a Visa card, they are not able to send the card to any other address other than the one registered to the account. From there, if I wanted to I could courier the card to where I am, but that would be at my expense and it just seems like a bit of a hassle. That has led me to basically figure out when I run out of cash (I still have a credit card, so all is not lost) and then try to change my flights to fit that schedule. That brings me to the second big problem: the flights that I was told were booked on Aer Lingus from London to Dublin and then Dublin to New York were not actually ever booked. I found that out this morning when I rocked up at the Aer Lingus counter at Heathrow to try to change the dates of the flights. The girl behind the counter told me that I didn't have any reservations with them because those flights had been cancelled last July, and that they had notified my ticketing agent of that fact at the time. All this is news to me, but it actually will work out for the best, since now I will just book a direct flight from London to Newark and then go after the travel agent I booked with to try and recoup the money I paid for the non-existent Aer Lingus tickets.

But it isn't all bad. I visited the British Museum already today, and man is that an amazing place. They have unbelievable Egyptian, Roman and Greek exhibits that are simply amazing. They have mummies, the Rosetta Stone, enormous Roman statues and wonderful Greek art work. They also have a special exhibit of Michelangelo's sketches from different periods of his life, including his early mock ups for the Sistine Chapel.

Tomorrow I will play my part as super-tourist and head to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and Parliament. After that I head to Scotland for the holiday weekend, then back to London before heading home sometime next week (I am targetting next Wednesday or Thursday at this point).