Full set of London photos are here
London was a stopping off point on the way to Jordan and Israel. London manages to attract Australians to it like a magnet so we had a few people to catch up with who were great hosts: Zoe, Penny and Olga, many thanks for the hospitality. Special mention has to go to Rinke who flew in from Frankfurt especially to see us and is paying our blog close attention – thanks for your interest.
I think one of the best things about London were the museums and galleries. They are all free to go in (although we did make donations) and are open at incredibly convenient hours. Either Sarah or I (or both) went into the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Modern, Tate Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and the British Museum. London is such a lively place that it was easy to remember how I got sucked into its vortex while living here for three years. It was also easy to remember all the bad points, being crammed on the underground during peak hour, the constant assault of the mass of humanity London attracts, the cloudy foggy days. As a five day stopover it’s a lot of fun but I had no desire to live there again.
The most exciting thing to happen in London was our attempts to get a Jordanian visa. You don’t normally need a visa to get into Jordan as an Aussie citizen (you get a fortnight on arrival) but as we wanted to go into Israel then back into Jordan we needed to apply for a double entry visa. The most convenient place for us to do this was London but not until a few days before our flight. The first mishap was my forgetting to bring my passport to the embassy, a small oversight. Luckily I have a British passport as well which Sarah carries for just such emergencies. So for the purposes of the middle east I am a British citizen. I don’t plan to join any riots. The clerk said that our visas might be ready on Monday, but definitely on Tuesday. We explained nicely that our flight was on Tuesday morning so it would be super if we could pick up our passports on Monday. He said they would see what they could do. As we were the only people asking for visas we were confident.
On Monday I was due to meet Sarah at 2pm at High Street Kensington tube station after she had been to the doctor and had lunch with a friend. What happened next has two different perspectives but I will try to give a balanced account. The Jordanian embassy shuts down at 3pm. By 2.30 there was still no sign of Sarah so I hoofed it up to the office and tried to get both passports. I didn’t have the visa collection tickets so could only get my passport by showing other ID. At this stage I got a flurry of delayed text messages from Sarah which she had sent hours earliern telling me that she was at the doctors and to collect the passports on my own. I explained that she really needed to be here before 3pm to collect her own passport, urgently. It was 2:47. I asked the embassy clerk to stay open for 10 minutes as Sarah was on her way, at this stage sitting in an unmoving underground train at Edgeware Road. We waited in the waiting room but eventually the clerk said that he had to close. It was possible for us to get the passport the following morning at 10am but this would be truly chaotic. I waited out on the street for Sarah and the staff milled around waiting for the other staff to leave. In the distance on the street I could see Sarah running towards us just as the clerk responsible for the passport exited on to the street. He kindly went back into the office and we had our visas.
Our London accommodation was up to the usual standard, small, tiny bed, cramped breakfast area, expensive. It’s no place for a budget traveller. We left on a ridiculously Easy Jet flight to Amman, Jordan to meet up with Sarah’s parents for a three week trip through the layered history of Jordan and Israel.
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