UK Day One

Landed at Heathrow at 11 am local time Thursday. Got through customs in around 10 minutes – must be a record.

German Girl flew into Stansted airport so we waited around at the bar for her to bus over to Heathrow. We figured this was safer than trying to meet somewhere else. Then went out to Hertz to pick up the rental car.

The rental car was a Mercedes C 180 and my God it is a delight to drive. It just handles the higher speeds effortlessly and is so smooth you wouldn’t wake the passengers.

One thing really bugs me about driving in the UK though. No-one bloody indicates!! I mean no-one. And when the South of England is nothing but a series of round-abouts, that gets really frustrating.

Anyway we grabbed the car and headed to Hounslow to try and grab UK maps for the TomTom GPS. Turned out one could only buy them online so then tried to buy a cable to link the TomTom to the laptop. After around 90 minutes of walking from shop to shop we discovered one that had such a cable. It turned out to be identical to the cable my Blackberry uses so turned out we didn’t need one at all. German Girl and Ginga Ninja commented how much they enjoyed shopping for unnecessary cables!

We then headed onto the motorway and down to Hastings which is around a 90  minute drive to East Sussex.

As one can see it is right on the coastline to the English Channel. We stayed at the Hastings House B&B which was very friendly and accomodating. The only challenge was that our rooms were on the third floor and there was no lift. And you can imagine how heavy the suitcases are.

The first two flights of stairs were bad enough, but the final one was narrow, winding and steep. Almost killed us getting them up there.

This is the view from the top.

After checking in we grabbed dinner at a local restaurant and then went to a Russian bar to watch football on the big screen as Germany was playing Portugal in the EUFA Euro 2008 championship quarter-finals. Germany won 3-2.