So, what to write about?

This seems to be an eternal blog issue for a few of us. Well, at least we’re not alone.

OK, so the trip to London was fantastic. The itinerary was:
Leave Sunday night at 6:15, arrive in London 7:20am their time
Go through customs, get baggage.
Ride 9:23am train to Harrow.
Arrive at hotel, put on suit.
Walk to office, 11:45am arrival.
Lunch (pizza) with Manager of Telesales group
After lunch, sit with Support team and Telesales folks individually to get an idea of their daily tasks.
Leave office around 5:30pm.
Go to dinner (Noodle Bar) and then to Irish pub named The Shawl for Guinness and entertainment.
The band consisted of drums, accordian, flute, two guitars and vocal (Elvis Costello’s half brother). True Irish music, no question about it.

Interesting tidbit that between sets, the bar was filled with the lovely music of…

…
…

Garth Brooks. Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not kidding. Quite an experience.

When they kicked us out of the bar at around 11pm (it was Monday, after all), I went back to my hotel to unpack and get some sleep.

Tuesday was my only full day in England:
Had meetings all day with the CEO, CFO, Commercial Director, and a salesperson. Also sat in on a client training session. Went to lunch at a Portugese rotisserie chicken place. Delicious. ¼ chicken, corn on the cob, and cole slaw.

After work, my very lovely host asked her husband to drive us into London for shopping. He was gracious enough to do this at the height of rush hour. He’s also quite the history buff and had information for every corner. It was great.

We went to Harrod’s. That place is incredible. I always thought of it as just a department store, but I was so very wrong. It’s about 6 floors across two city blocks, sitting on a corner (according to the website, there are 330 departments!). The part that amazed me the most was the food section. Almost an entire floor by itself there was just tons of incredible expensive gourmet foods of all kinds – cheeses (the counter was about 50 feet long), olives (no less than 10 varieties), chocolates, candies, seafood, produce. It was just amazing. I bought some cigars, and we were on our way. Then we went to a more department store like place called Selfridges. I bought a few items here, but the best was the Moet bar on the mezzanine overlooking the whole store.

I didn’t buy much because the exchange rate doesn’t help us out one bit right now.

We then ate dinner at a tapas restaurant and headed home via the Tube.

In bed by 12:30am after packing, checked out at 7am Wednesday, hopped on a train at 8:15, and on the flight home at 12pm. Watched three movies (Blade Trinity, Lemony Snickett, and Meet the Fockers) on the flight and was home before I knew it.

All in all, a great three days.