London for New Years

Well I think the title of this Blog makes it self explanatory. I was in London for the New Years celebration. It is actually the second time I have been in London for New Years, and this time seemed a lot crazier than I remember. The first time was a decade ago when I when with my dad. He was leading some training for the airline at this time and asked if I wanted to. It was a lot of fun. We went to the tower of London, the wax museum, Piccadilly Circus, and a few pubs. It was over my freshman winter break at the university. This year I met up with my wife in London. Or rather I should say I met up with the crew: my wife, my sister in law, their roommate, and another of their Russian friends. It was actually quite reminiscent of college as we had all of these people in a single hotel room.

One of the best perks of my job/career is that I get to rack up the hotel, airline, credit card, and rental car points. So when we travel I don’t generally need to go online and look for the cheapest deal. Instead I go to Marriott’s web site see what they have in the city and use my points. This also makes traveling a lot cheaper. In fact I think in general hotels are the biggest expense when traveling. But using the miles for airfare certainly helps. Our hotel was just outside of the city center to the north and there was an Underground station within 4 blocks. So it was really never more than a 20 minute ride to get anywhere. The underground in the UK is so nice because you can get any where. Its layout is basically a loop with several strands that cross both the loop and each other in a manner that resembles a spider web. Even though we came into different airports we were all able to take the underground to the hotel. No fussing with shuttles, buses, or taxi’s.

The hotel was very nice, though the pool and executive lounge were crowded most of the time. We didn’t spend a lot of time there; instead leaving in the morning seeing a bunch of sites, then returning to freshen up, and leaving again for a bit of night life. We saw quite a lot of sites in face. The tower of London, tower bridge, the BA London Eye, Buckingham palace, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly circus, Oxford and Canary streets, the Winston Churchill Museum, the Cabinet War Rooms, the original Hard Rock Café (yes it was founded out side the states), Harrods (though it was so crowded the girls had no intentions of shopping), Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abby, to name a few. We also dinned on fish and chips, Shepard’s pie, and sausage and mash at local pubs and fish n chips establishments. I tried to tone it down, and we only went to se a couple of things a day. But I still think I wore RG out a bit.

Now originally RG wanted to go to a pretty fancy party on a WWII ship anchored on the Thames. I thought it was a little expensive and put off looking into alternatives. So I will give this point of advice. If you are in London for New Year’s Eve have a plan and a venue well in advance. Being out on the streets is insane to say the least. After it was too late I actually found boat cruises on the Thames that were well within budget but they were sold out. So I have to admit I dropped the ball on that one. So we decided we would head down to the river across from the London Eye stop in a pub for a few drinks, then watch the fireworks out side. Well, all the pubs had lines to get in leading out into the street. We didn’t bring any beverages and ended up being carried by the crowd to a location to watch the fireworks, where we hung out soberly and somewhat somberly for nearly two hours. They did have music playing over the loudspeaker PA system and the people watching was good.

However the fireworks were well worth the wait (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4tqsQktE2w). The British are nutz. That is all I have to say. They had over 100,000 separate pyrotechnics go off for the show. Not over $100,000 worth, but actually more than 100,000 individual explosions. It was like watching the Fourth of July fireworks. Only the main show was like our finallies and finally was 10 times that. The whole show lasted 30 to 40 minutes and was mesmerizing to say the least. My favorite part was when they had a couple doze rockets launching from the London Eye in a bidirectional loop that started at the bottom of the wheel and me at the top, all while two boats in the river motored back and forth launching several more from launch tube in the back of the boat! After it was finished nothing but madness ensued.

The BBC reported the next day that there had been over 700,000 people out on the streets of London. 2/3 of the underground station had been closed and most people didn’t want to wait in the long lines at those that were open. Neither did we. So we along with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people roamed the streets of London looking for an open underground station. The foot traffic was so great it brought all auto traffic to a stand still for hours. Not only that, but there was no place to pee. This seems short sighted to me. We saw countless people making there own arrangements, it is a good thing it rained within the next few days. We finally gave up trying to find a way back to the hotel room at around 3:00am and ditched into a hole in the wall Indian food restaurant. Shared some appetizers and other small plates of food, used the restrooms, and waited for the crowd to disperse. An hour later we were able to get to an underground station, and we were to the hotel and in bed by 5:30a.

So I guess I should have gotten reservations to a party or cruise earlier, they don’t even let you back onto the streets until the crowds have dispersed and in the mean time you have a place to relax and have drinks. I would be upset if the venue did not offer a view of the fireworks.