A rude awakening

I was hoping to sleep in this morning. A few long days in a row, a relatively nice hotel, no work and no reason to wake up.

At 08:11 in the morning a friend of mine calls me on my mobile phone which wakes me up. I didn't actually answer the phone but rather turned it off and tried to go back to sleep. Later when I did get up I listened to the message. This asshole actually called me at 08:11 in the morning on a Sunday to ask me what my Skype account name was. For those of you who use Skype try this incredibly difficult task: Use the search contact feature; enter Derek as the first name and France as the country. See if you can figure out which is me out of the thousands of entries which appear. Hint: it's the first one!

Unfortunately I couldn't really get back to sleep. I got up at a little after 09:00, showered and headed off to something I had been looking forward to: a full English breakfast. The food here ain't great, in comparison to many other hotels I've been to, but breakfast was what I had expected. I literally had bacon, sausage, tomato, mushrooms... There's no point mentioning fried next to any of those words as an English breakfast is 100% fried. I had scrambled eggs which I have not had for quite some time. They went down very well. They were actually easier to eat and more enjoyable than the poached eggs I've been making myself recently. I have to remember that. The salty sausages and bacon also went down very well and I could taste all of it. The coffee was just plain awful... but then again that was entirely expected. The English make some of the best tea in the world. But they don't know from coffee. Unless of course you're willing to sell your car for the right to purchase a cup of espresso which is better than any other coffee one can drink in England but still about the level of mediocre cup of coffee in France. Breakfast was excellent.

I checked out not long after that and schlepped my bags down Park Street to Grosvenor Square and to the Marriott. I got there at 11:30 expecting to just leave my bags and head back out. My room was ready!!! I was therefore able to get up in to my room, completely unpack, lie down for a bit and get the computer up and running. I am now sitting here typing this on the, in my personal opinion, overpriced WiFi connection in my room (£20.00 per day) which was entirely free at the other hotel.

I will be heading out for a bit of shopping soon...