Europe 2023, August 11th

I managed to stay up until about 9pm but then kept waking up every half hour or so after going to sleep. Had another go with the travel sim card in the morning but it still wasn't working.

Went for a longer running loop around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens that came to about 7km, felt a lot better than yesterday already. The free breakfast at the hotel was pretty good - chocolate croissants, muesli, plain yoghurt, and pineapple pieces.

I didn't have a specific plan for the first day as I didn't know how tired I would be. Walked to Baker Street station which turned out to be a bit further than expected. Then took a train over to North Greenwich and walked to the O2 Outlets, there was very few people around. Saw a poster for a new Muse tour at O2 but sadly not until October, a few weeks too late. Found nothing in the Asics store, and nothing much in Nike either. Adidas had good discounts on many Manchester United clothes but most were the terrible shirt colours like light blue and lime green. Got a Germany home shirt instead.

Got the train back to Green Park on the same line and walked over to Buckingham Palace. I think the midday changing of the guards must have just finished as there was a big crowd starting to disperse. Walked back down The Mall towards Trafalgar Square rather than the houses of parliament direction, past the old lion statues and the column.

Next walked up to Leicester Square, lots of tourist shops around but I was on the lookout for a mobile phone store in particular. Over to Piccadilly Circus next, having very specific flashbacks of playing the COD Modern Warfare (2019 version) level from that same intersection. I think when I played it on maximum difficult level I got stuck on that one section for a significant time, so spent many hours memorising all the locations and routes - very close to reality.

Had a much too long walk all the way up to Oxford Circus and finally found all of the mobile phone stores together in one spot on Oxford Street, worse than the hammock district. Three Mobile had a board out front offering 50 GB for 20 pounds which seemed about right. It only included 12 GB for non-UK but that should also be enough for about 10 days too, and actually only got charged 15 pounds.

This sim card worked immediately once it was inserted, much better than the other garbage sim card with a manual activation process that didn't even work.

Took the train one stop back to Baker Street and got Five Guys for lunch, quite expensive for a meal of toasted cheese sandwich (very small), large chips (so many chips), and banana milkshake - over 30 dollars.

It was three more train stops to get back to Paddington by train instead of walking, which explains why it took so long in the morning. Got a bit of food for later, and a special Lewis Hamilton monster drink. It gets tedious very quickly though as every time you buy an energy drink at the self serve checkout it has to be approved by staff because it's restricted to 15+ years old or something.

Went back to the hotel, my legs weren't feeling too sore despite all the walking but I wanted to save some energy for parkrun in the morning.