Ach, my poor feet

It was supposed to be a simple trip to find CNY decorations at Chinatown. So the plan was that after I ditched the water filter at Tescos at Old Kent Road, we'll bus back to dump our school stuff and then to take RV1 down to Covent Garden.

Obstacle #1
Our Oyster cards had only 20p left on them, which means that we wouldn't be able to take a bus home from Chinatown later. So we thought that we would top them up at London Bridge on the way back from Tescos. But when we got there, we realised that the station was closed because of some emergency. Ah well, we thought, it would open in a while; we can top up on the way out. And so we went home.

And came out. But the freaking station was still closed and sirens were still wailing. Ah well, we thought again, we'll just go take the bus. There would be stations at Covent Garden where we can top up before we come back. I remember telling pw at this point, happily, "We are not screwed!"

Obstacle #2
RV1 pulled up along London Bridge and we hopped on, tapped our Oysters... and got off the bus.

You see, unlike the EZ-link back in sunny Singapore, the Oyster can't have negative values. So our meagre 20p was insufficient to pay for the 80p trip. Freak!

We tried to look for somewhere to top up. But London Bridge was still closed. We decided that we could cross London Bridge (the bridge, not the tube station) to get to Monument Station on the other side. We hoped that it was open.

Obstacle #3
You guessed it! It was closed as well, complete with the wailing sirens of the fire truck. Well it turned out that there was a fire at Bank Station and so stations in the vicinity were all closed till further notice.

By this time, we have decided to walk to Chinatown. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. It was only that it would take us an hour.

And so we went along the northern bank of River Thames towards the Strand. It was a nice walk but we both think the South Bank is nicer to walk along. The north bank was just loads of office buildings, somewhat like the Raffles Place stretch of Singapore River.

We evetually topped up our Oysters at Temple Station, which was at Aldwych, which was near Covent Garden.

Haha, because we took an unintentional long walk, we both succumbed to temptation and took a detour to Ben's cookies at Covent Garden. (Ok, I was the more tempted one. pw was not that hungry.) The cookie was DELICIOUS! WONDERFUL! YUMMY! SCRUMPTIOUS! I had Fruits and Nuts and Milk Chocolate Chunks while pw had White Chocolate Chunks. The chocolate just sends you to heaven, I tell you. I want more. Heh.

Thus fortified, we went on to Chinatown. We found it without much trouble. I bought my CNY decoration and pw got cards for her family. And we made up our minds that we'd eat at Mr Wu's All-you-can-eat Buffet sometime. It's 4.95 per person and the food looks not bad.

Obstacle #4
We got mildly lost trying to get back to Covent Garden from Leicester Square. We missed a turn and walked in the complete opposite direction from where we were supposed to go. So we ended up consulting the big map of Central London several times and peering at street names and finally reaching Holborn after 30 to 40 minutes of walking. I suspect that we walked in some roundabout way.

From Holborn, we took a bus back and pw was so bushed she nodded off on the bus. I didn't though and was rewarded by overhearing this amazingly long and what sounded like a horribly insincere conversation. These two women ran into each other after having not met for some time. So one of them was going on and on with "Oh, how nice it is to meet you!", "So how's so-and-so? Is she still there?", "Oh my, can you believe that? She's moved to Moscow with her husband!" and "Oh, I did like her; she was lovely." It was just so... superficial. And you can hear every sentence ending with some exclamation. I would think that this type of small talk will run itself out in a very short time, but these two just went on for 20 minutes without a pause. Astonishing.

So here ends the long walk that we didn't intend to take. And we went home to a dinner of lousy sausages. Bleah, they were just bags of extremely minced-up meat soaked in oil. No more Tescos economy sausages for us, haha.

But Ben's cookies are REALLY GOOD. Well, I walked mine off. So I shan't get fat. Hah.