Lifting the Visa Curse
Jul. 17th, 2006 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidn(Written on July 17th)
This was the big day - the moment of arrival of the visa. After another 7am start, I left my huge and unwieldy suitcase at the hotel and set off to Jean's again, at the time just before the sun began beating down and frying everybody again. To pass the time, I sat and looked up flights for the day after phoning the courier service again to make sure that it would be delivered that morning and that they hadn't given me a visa to Australia by mistake. They said that it would arrive today, but couldn't be more specific than 9am to 5pm. Incompetents.
It was 11am when the package arrived, while I was trying to solve an insurmountable musical puzzle in the Best of ZZT. I stepped into the hallway expecting a pristine uniformed officer waiting with it, but instead was greeted by a shabby-looking Middle Eastern man who looked like he'd just cycled a marathon. He handed me a far bigger package than I had been expecting and vanished back into the lift.
Naturally I opened it straight away, and phoned Whitney's family to wake everyone up and tell them that I could finally get on my way. The package contained a not-quite-A4-American-size folder that has to be opened by the customs officials (and it's almost as heavy as my laptop) and my passport, now complete with a second dreadful photo on the page headed "VISA".
I booked my flight immediately, going for one on Virgin Atlantic - partly because it was a cheap direct flight, but mostly because they're not Air France.
The real journey starts tomorrow, though, and finding a hotel proved to be a bigger problem. The one that I had been staying in couldn't extend my reservation because they were fully booked, and after looking online and asking at the travel agent, it seemed that so was the whole of London. I had planned to stay in a hotel at the airport itself, but they're all exceptionally expensive - I even found one that charged £3,000 a night, and I think it would have to provide at least a private jacuzzi and a decent-sized harem of furry girls to be worth that. But I went back to the flat to have another look, and finally found a hotel about two streets away from where I'd started that morning.
I had been rather fortunate to find a decent hotel for £50 a night last time, but this one is a bit of a dump to be honest. Cunningly, they took a photo of the hotel across the road rather than their own for the online advert. Not that the impression at the entranceway is bad - it's just that my room's in the basement, and it shows a bit. I couldn't help thinking of the "Get out of the lift" scene from The IT Crowd when the lift doors opened (and you should remember that, because it's one of only about three good bits from the whole series).
To give an impression of what it looks like, the walls in the corridor are made of cross-hatched metal, the door to my room has a heavy industrial-type lock on it, and the ceiling is composed of slowly wilting tiles that wouldn't look out of place in a school conference room. I have an ensuite bathroom and shower (just a spigot with a rusty sprayer attached, really), complete with a bit of crepe paper on the floor helpfully labelled "BATH MAT", as if it was trying to fool anybody.
What it lacks in polish it certainly makes up for in size, though - I thought I was going to get a tiny AMH-style room for my £49 like I had last time, but this one has three beds in two separate rooms. (I'm not going to go into discussion about quite why there are three beds in a twin room.) One's being used to store my suitcase, another for my clothes. And the advantage of being in the basement is that it's nice and cold, even in the sweltering heat that's blanketed over the rest of the city.
So here I am, with a visa and a purpose once again. Actually, the only purpose just now is to waste enough time before it's justifiable to go to bed.
This was the big day - the moment of arrival of the visa. After another 7am start, I left my huge and unwieldy suitcase at the hotel and set off to Jean's again, at the time just before the sun began beating down and frying everybody again. To pass the time, I sat and looked up flights for the day after phoning the courier service again to make sure that it would be delivered that morning and that they hadn't given me a visa to Australia by mistake. They said that it would arrive today, but couldn't be more specific than 9am to 5pm. Incompetents.
It was 11am when the package arrived, while I was trying to solve an insurmountable musical puzzle in the Best of ZZT. I stepped into the hallway expecting a pristine uniformed officer waiting with it, but instead was greeted by a shabby-looking Middle Eastern man who looked like he'd just cycled a marathon. He handed me a far bigger package than I had been expecting and vanished back into the lift.
Naturally I opened it straight away, and phoned Whitney's family to wake everyone up and tell them that I could finally get on my way. The package contained a not-quite-A4-American-size folder that has to be opened by the customs officials (and it's almost as heavy as my laptop) and my passport, now complete with a second dreadful photo on the page headed "VISA".
I booked my flight immediately, going for one on Virgin Atlantic - partly because it was a cheap direct flight, but mostly because they're not Air France.
The real journey starts tomorrow, though, and finding a hotel proved to be a bigger problem. The one that I had been staying in couldn't extend my reservation because they were fully booked, and after looking online and asking at the travel agent, it seemed that so was the whole of London. I had planned to stay in a hotel at the airport itself, but they're all exceptionally expensive - I even found one that charged £3,000 a night, and I think it would have to provide at least a private jacuzzi and a decent-sized harem of furry girls to be worth that. But I went back to the flat to have another look, and finally found a hotel about two streets away from where I'd started that morning.
I had been rather fortunate to find a decent hotel for £50 a night last time, but this one is a bit of a dump to be honest. Cunningly, they took a photo of the hotel across the road rather than their own for the online advert. Not that the impression at the entranceway is bad - it's just that my room's in the basement, and it shows a bit. I couldn't help thinking of the "Get out of the lift" scene from The IT Crowd when the lift doors opened (and you should remember that, because it's one of only about three good bits from the whole series).
To give an impression of what it looks like, the walls in the corridor are made of cross-hatched metal, the door to my room has a heavy industrial-type lock on it, and the ceiling is composed of slowly wilting tiles that wouldn't look out of place in a school conference room. I have an ensuite bathroom and shower (just a spigot with a rusty sprayer attached, really), complete with a bit of crepe paper on the floor helpfully labelled "BATH MAT", as if it was trying to fool anybody.
What it lacks in polish it certainly makes up for in size, though - I thought I was going to get a tiny AMH-style room for my £49 like I had last time, but this one has three beds in two separate rooms. (I'm not going to go into discussion about quite why there are three beds in a twin room.) One's being used to store my suitcase, another for my clothes. And the advantage of being in the basement is that it's nice and cold, even in the sweltering heat that's blanketed over the rest of the city.
So here I am, with a visa and a purpose once again. Actually, the only purpose just now is to waste enough time before it's justifiable to go to bed.
