First day of London pics

I arrived at 5am on Sept 1, and took a shuttle from Gatwick Airport to Heathrow Airport to meet Stephen who was arriving there in an hour or two. I get there and eventually he shows up and we take the tube to the hostel. They let us drop our bags off, but... suddenly danger! They can't let us check in until 2pm. It's around 7-8am at this point, and we're pretty tired since we had woken up at about 7-8am the previous morning (different time zone of course).

So we wandered around the city, and eventually came back to the hostel around noon, and fell asleep in the lounge until 2pm. Then we fell asleep in our beds until noon the next day. We still didn't have any plans though we had spoken to one of the hostel-girls about things to do so we had a general idea of where to go and what to see.

These pics were taken on our first day in London: Nice chilly windy overcast day. I'm not sure if it was our first full day or our arrival day. I have no idea where we were for the most part, but I know some of you fellow readers have been there, so does anything look familiar?

You'll have to click this to see the full sign. I have no idea what "smart water" is.

Some pictures of some streets and some cars.

The British Telecom tower and a sign with some gas prices on it. Keep in mind that these are in Great Britain Pounds, so they're actually paying about $2/Litre!

The next pic is some building that felt it was necessary to reflect the BT tower.

So we're walking down the street, and this guy is shouting at a meter maid who is writing him a ticket or something and looks like he's about to tow the guy's car. This was evidenced by the tow truck sitting next to it. The guy repeatedly shouts "Get a real job!", gets in his car and drives off. Then the meter maid focuses on the next car... and prepares the tow truck.

These tow trucks don't fuck around. They get your car. They don't just grab the front and pull it away... they reach underneath the car and lift it right off the ground. See the pics. We stood around and watched the entire thing. This process, I believe, is called "clamping".

More pics. A red telephone booth and a weird building (it was cylindrical and hollow -- I walked into the center, which was outdoors, and took pictures).

Neat buildings. One that I call the "hive", and another one that just looks kind of weird, though the effect is lost in a photo. I should have made one of those red/blue 3D photos. If only...

Graffito.

Looking at Stephen's camera in the hostel room.