So far from home (London day 4) in Adventures in paradise

I’m sitting in a Starbucks, using their WiFi, somewhere in a side-street near Oxford Street. I’ve already been up for 4-hours, wandering around and its not even 9am.

It’s not all fun and games unfortunately. I’m still quite sick. I’m soothing my throat with a hot mocha. I swear I keep ending up in either Camden or Oxford Street, but I guess that’s easy enough to do. There’s so many side streets that still have famous-brand shops down them, so people must wander down there. I know I have been.

It amazes me how old some of these buildings look. I wish I knew exactly how old, but very few have years cemented into them, like a lot of older Aussie buildings do. But Australia was only discovered in 1788. This city looks about a thousand years older :P

So yeah, I decided to get up early and go for a walk. My coughing is only keeping the other guys in the doom awake at night, I’m sure of it. I’m half-thinking of just blowing a fortune on my own hotel room so I can suffer in silence lol. But I do need to survive this trip :P

I’ve nearly gone through my first bottle of cough syrup. I think I will ask for something stronger next time. I’ve also got Strepsils and I’m going through my tissues that I brought over quicker than I’d like to.

The guys in my doom seem nice. One asked if I was okay last night haha. He reckons most tourists get sick for about two days and then it goes away. I fucking hope so! I don’t wanna be stuck on long-distance trains with this next weekend.

I’m awaiting Andrew to wake up. He’s staying around here somewhere, and is going to show me around a little. It’s weird that I haven’t heard from him yet. Maybe he went out.

I’m trying to figure out how topping up mobile credit works here without an account. Since I’m only here for a month, I’m giving this to Andrew to use when I leave, so he has the account details which I apparently need the login for to top up. Lot different to Australia where I can just buy a voucher and be on my way.

I feel like I’ve seen so much already. Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The Shard, Hyde Park… I guess they are all close together. This morning’s walk was back along Oxford, all through Mayfair again and a walk along Park Lane. My God, there are so many luxury brands I hadn’t even heard of. I stopped to look in a real-estate window where apartment prices began at £3,500,000 LOL.
Factoring in the shitty exchange rate atm, that’s about A$8,000,000 or so.
Sure, I’ll just get that out of petty cash :P

Anyway, so I just want to get better so that I can fully enjoy myself here. If I don’t, I guess its off to the doc for me. Ergh. Being sick so far from home is rather scary.