Greetings from London!

I say, old chaps, pip pip from London! Of course, no one talks like that now or probably ever did outside of books and music halls. I have to find a more authentic greeting.
It was a generally uneventful trip here---which is how I like it. It mostly consisted of waiting. Waiting to be picked up. Waiting at the airport. The flight. It was not bad. My seat mate was a champion sleeper, and the guy in the seat behind me was some sort of religious fanatic, but the interesting thing was I couldn’t figure out which religion he was being a fanatic about or if the two wives were consecutive or concurrent.
The airline food was pretty bad, and unlike other trips on other carriers, we were asked to pay for booze. Nope. I will not shell out six bucks for a little airplane bottle of wine, and the food didn’t deserve it anyway. No butter for the roll?
But then we flew down the Thames on our approach. Wait, is that Greenwich? Yes, and Canary Wharf. There’s the Millennium Dome and the London Eye!
But it’s a mistake for a flight to arrive early. The gate is never ready, and we wait. And then there was a problem at baggage claim, and we waited some more. And then there was a problem on the Underground line to London and—ok I think you get it. But I am the proud possessor of something called the Oyster Card, so I can bus and tube around to my heart's content—for a price. And it was sold to me by a cheery young transport worker clearly used to dealing with jet-lagged foreigners.
The trip in to the city was a real London experience with a sweltering, stuffy, packed train car where for every one person getting off ten got on. And of course I turned the wrong way out of the tube and several wrong ways after that because I get totally turned around in London, but obviously I’ve made it safe and sound.
As is my custom for my first dinner in London I went out for something quintessentially English, and no I don’t mean Chicken Tikka Masala, which some claim to be the new national dish. I went to an old fashioned chippie for cod and chips. Manna from Heaven is what it should be called. Crisp crust encloses sweet, tender fish. The potatoes are thick cut and meaty not crisp. All is seasoned with salt and malt vinegar and washed down with the perfect (to my mind) accompaniment—-dry cider from Somerset a area in the west of England. It’s fresh tasting and applely but not sweet. The Normans brought cider making to England, which makes it even better.
Cheerio!