London

We left Singapore on Tuesday and arrived in London on Tuesday evening. No major hassles at the airport, but a rather thorough security check at the boarding lounge in Singapore. We had to start the laptop and use the cameras to prove that they were the real thing.

Caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington and then a taxi to where our hotel was. We were surprised that we had to load our own luggage into the taxi, no help from the driver whatsoever (unlike in NZ). The hotel (Bayswater Inn) was pretty awful for the price that we paid for it. Firstly the room was difficult to get into, there was a special knack to turn the key and knob (we had to get someone from the hotel to show us the first time). Secondly the bed had springs, which would have been ok if there was any padding on top of the springs, Andrew got woken up in the middle of the night because he was sore from the springs digging into him. Thirdly there was no hand towel and bath mat consisted of a piece of paper with two footprints on it. So we were pretty disappointed with it given the amount we paid, and we will never make the assumption again that because the hotel was booked through a touring company that it will be of decent quality - always check on www.tripadvisor.com!

Anyhow, the 2 days that we had in London were pretty full on. On Wednesday, we had our interviews with the recruitment agent, Andrew also had a phone interview for a job at the same time. We tried to get our bank accounts sorted but the queue was so long that we never got our turn before we had to leave to get Andrew to his second interview out in Guildford (south of London). We both caught the overland train out there for it. We saw Jonno Fletcher (ex Beca) as we were leaving the company, who he currently works for.
Today (Thursday) Andrew had two interviews (one in High Wycombe - northwest London, and the other in West Byfleet - south of London) which he went to alone. I had a phone call for an interview in central London, which I went to in the avo. And we managed to get our bank accounts sorted today in between all of the above. And we tried our first Cornish pasties today too (real Cornish pasties from Cornwall!)

In the evening, we dropped off our extra suitcase to Rob in Putney Bridge, before making a midnight expedition to BK for some ultra late dinner. They were closing so we only had 1 option of a bacon cheeseburger.

Bayswater seems like a nice area, good street for shops with cheap internet.