It's A Small World

23 September - woke up earlyish and got my run out of the way - defeattd a few pf my nemeses on the way (you wouldn't believe what they'd been saying about my mother) and then made a few phone calls to my reasonably recently acquired relatives in France (thank you Uncle Dave for being such a francophile) trying to organise a manger to sleep in whilst on my first intercontinental jaunt. It looks like everything is sorted out now. Headed into town to use the balance of my Oriignal Tour ticket (it expired at midday) and had a Pret A Manger sandwich. Pret was here last time I was and it specialises in producing gourmet pre-packaged sandwiches - there ar lots of places where you can get pre-made sandwiches - in fact it is so much the norm that places that make them on the spot often market their sandwiches on this one selling point. It is not as if the Pret ones are bad sandwiches - they ar very nice (James T swears by them and I had a very tasty one) but it baffles me that the pre-packaged, processed meals ar so popular when there is a viable alternative, even McDonalds makes its food only a few minutes in advance. Also, eatinga nice sandwich saddens me because iit reminds me of the sandwiches I left behind in Sydney - I still have not found the equal of the Big Ass Sandwich Shop of Bridge St - but i'm going to Paris, the spiritual home of bread and the actual home of thousands of snooty elitist French sandwich makers so I may be lucky.
After the sandwich and the bus ride I headed towards South Kensington to the Museum of Natural History - i 'd just passed Harrods when I heard someone yell out my name - it was my old Optus boss, Gabi Cseh - I knew he had been travelling in Europe but had no idea that he was in London - he was just wandering the streets as I was and had seen me from his bus. whilst travellng the tourist trail in Asia I was constantly bumping into people i'd met earlier on in my travels - we're all doing similar routes and staying in similar places but Europe is a lot bigger than South East Asia and there are a lot more white people so we don't stick out so much which makes it so surprising that we managed to cross paths. Had a very nice reunion (i always preferred him outside of the work environment) and he came to the museum with me (great dinosaur exhibition although the museum does start to get kind of dull after four hour hours when I was in the physical earth section) before visiting a local overpriced pub with a surly Irishman propping up the bar.
Earlyish night as I had to get up at 4:00(ish) for my Eurostar train into Paris (to leave an hour later costs almost double on a Friday) ... had an okay coffee and croissant at Waterloo station but am hoping to have a very good one in a couple of hours ...