the last day: london, then back to india

I had intended to write a long, exciting post about my mis/adventures over the past two weeks, but when I returned to my hotel room yesterday afternoon, I discovered that the internet on the TV no longer worked. After calling the IT department, I learned that the multimedia had been disconnected in preparation for an upcoming upgrade, and that I shouldn't have been able to access it the night before. By that time, I didn't particularly want to venture out to find an internet cafe, although I did want dinner--so I went to the Hard Rock Cafe, hoping to enjoy some tasty American food. Amusingly enough, the restaurant was closed for a month due to a fire that they had sometime in the recent past, and so I went back to my hotel and ordered room service.

All in all, London has been quite relaxing this time around; I got up late yesterday, took a bubble bath, had lunch with Lea and then met her husband, which was fun, and then rested for a bit. I also went bookshopping and stopped at a Starbucks for a mocha frappuccino, taking full advantage of the opportunity to have overpriced drinks before returning to the land of Old Monk and lassi (which is made with yoghurt and which I do not particularly enjoy). Last night, as I said, I ate in bed and read a book before going to sleep. I checked out of my hotel this morning, and had intended to just sit around for a couple of hours before going to the airport--but I got the time wrong in my head, and while I thought that my plane left at 6:30, it doesn't actually leave until 9:30. That still isn't late enough for me to go to an event that would have been very fun (Lea and her husband invited me to a party with the actors from 'Shaun of the Dead' since the husband was one of the zombies--he got a shard for an old vinyl record embedded in his eye during the woodshed scene, for those of you who saw it), but it is late enough that I shouldn't sit around in a Starbucks for six hours. I guess that means that it is my destiny to go to Westminster Abbey and hope that it isn't closed on this, my third attempt--I got an email from Emily that pointed out that I should go in case it's no longer there when I come back to London, a clear reference to the fact that when I visited her in New York a few years ago, she didn't take me to the world trade center because I could do such touristy things anytime. She may be right--and while the Notre Dame in Paris was so magnificent as to ruin me for other churches, Westminster Abbey does have a significant amount of history to thrill my Anglophile soul. Unfortunately I left my camera in my bags at the hotel, but it feels weird taking pictures in churches anyway.

The last two days in London were exactly what I needed--I'm now longer coughing more than once or twice an hour, my plague/bedbugs are subsiding, and I may actually be able to go to work on Monday without falling asleep at my desk. Now it's off to Westminster--I'll write again when I'm back in Hyderabad. My safe arrival will be contingent on my ability to survive the shock and insanity of spending six hours in the Bombay airport after becoming reaccustomed to Western life. Regardless of what happens, I'm sure that it will be quite amusing, as long as I remember not to drink anything with ice in it and to use copious amounts of disinfectant after touching things.