London, take two

This trip has not been good. Save the great meal at the New Tayyab last night, everything has just been icky. The trip over was *very* bumpy. Chris really wouldn't have liked it at all. Then I got to London and found my brand new luggage—just bought it two weeks ago—completely destroyed. Yes, destroyed. I found it wrapped in ducktape, the color of which coordinated perfectly with my pricey metal Delsey case. How thoughtful of the TSA thugs who broke opened my bag. To check on what, shampoo? @#$%&!

As if the Travel God hasn't had enough of mucking with me, the ever-dependable Heathrow Express stopped dead in its track five minutes into the trip. Apparently the command center's computer crashed. It was probably running Windows. The end result was the normally 15-minute trip to Paddington turned into 30.

Got to the hotel, the room, of course, wasn't ready. By that time I was already expecting it. Rohan was nice enough to let me at least brush my teeth in postage stamp size bathroom before we had to run to our first meeting. Ten cups of coffee kept me semi-alive and half-functioning through the day.

As I said, the only saving grace of the day was I didn't let Rohan led us to the Mango Room. We instead had a great dinner at the New Tayyab. Everything was yummy and super spicy. And I finally had the first laugh of the day when, responding to John's Yanky accented request “Check please”, the waiter brought us a plate of chickpeas…..