Saturday, September 13, 2014

Lost in London

It was easy to become lost in a sea of people. I discovered this myself only the second day after arriving London. In a massive crowd of people of all colours and ages, it was impossible to locate someone who is supposed to be very familiar to you.

After touring The Westminster Abby, I followed behind my group of four to proceed to our next destination. Just then, I stopped and decided to take one last shot of the Abby. By the time I finished the shot and looked around, none of my group was within sight. I rushed forward squeezing through the crowd trying to locate any of my group members, unfortunately, there was no sign of any of them.

I remembered the rule, if you are lost, return to the spot where you last saw your members and wait for your team to come back for you. I did just that but none of them came back for me even after 10 minute wait. I decided to call each of them using my hand phone. Unfortunately, none of the calls got through. After another 10 minutes of fruitless wait, I decided my next move - go back to the hotel either by a cab or walking.

Since we came to the Westminster Abby from the hotel by walking, I knew the hotel would not be too far away. Walking back should not be too difficult. I started to walk towards the direction of the hotel after locating my destination using my GPS (fortunately). After crossing the road and reached the traffic light, I saw my group had been waiting there. That was a mere 200m from the spot I waited. I just couldn't understand why they decided to wait there but did not go back another 200 m to the original spot! They clearly did not follow the rule!

What an incident to remember Westminster Abby!

Westminster Abby, formally called the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster is a huge Anglican Church in London. This has been the traditional place of coronation and burial site for British monarchs. I could think of two recent major events held here. First was the official ceremony of the public funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales on 6 September 1997 after her death in a car accident in Paris. Then on 29 April 2011, the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.


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1984 vs 2014

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