Day 28 - Tickets, Visa and Walkies

So today was the big day to finalise some travel arrangements. First up was to ring the DB Rail booking office just after 9:00am where I was almost straight through to an operator and was able to successfully book our sleeper from Prague to Krakow. So far so good.


The next step was to travel to the Russian Visa Application Centre just off Old Street in the NE corner of the city. There I was told that there was no actual “Visa Transfer Form”, but that I could just use one of their computers to key in the details necessary to generate a Visa Application Form. I was worried that this would mean incurring their £26.40 agency fee, but was assure this was not so. I had to wait a while for one of the computers to become free but once it did it was a relatively simple process to key in the details and print off the form.

By the time I was finished there it seemed unlikely that I was going to make it to the Russian Embassy (in the West corner of the city) before they shut for lunch at noon, so I treated myself to an early lunch in a food hall and then sat there to type up yesterday’s blog. I still had time to fill after doing that so I caught the tube only to Marble Arch, three stops before Queensway which is the closest to the embassy, and had a pleasant walk through Hyde Park.

Thus I arrived at the embassy just at 2:00pm as the security guy was opening up the gate for the afternoon. He actually recognized me from yesterday and I was one of four people ushered in through a separate entrance to a separate room from those with regular visa applications. Shortly a lady came to the little teller’s window and after eyeballing the details of my old and new passport to check that they matched, she just required me to pay the adjacent teller £26 and off she went to get the new visa installed. In about 25 minutes (or one and a half Sudokus) she was back with a nice new visa in my new passport and big cancelled stamps all over the visa in my old passport.

Gardens at Kensington Palace

So with all outstanding travel issues resolved I decided to start making like a tourist. And since it happened to be nearby I decided to start with a tour of Kensington Palace. The palace is currently setup with an innovative display about the lives of seven princesses who have lived there, from Mary (about 300 years ago) through to Diana.



Mayfair street scene

 From there I started an impromptu walking tour through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park (including the Serpentine Gallery), Mayfair, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Hanover Square, Oxford Circus, Carnaby Street, Soho, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. (Yes, it does look like they stole their street names off the Monopoly board doesn’t it!). If you have a map of London handy it will be easy to see how this leisurely stroll took something like four and a half hours. It was well after 7pm by the time I reached Carnaby Street but it was still quite busy with people and bars even if most of the actual shops were shut. Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square was positively crowded with a lot of people out and about enjoying this happening part of London.

So it was that it was close to 9pm by the time I made it back to base. The remainder of the evening was uneventful, other than watching an interesting documentary about the NYC firemen killed on 9/11.