31 Hours from Canberra to London - Marathon Yet to Come!

After travelling for 31 hours from Canberra to London, we arrived at the hotel in London, tired, hungry and in need of a good shower.  But although we had arranged early checkin, the rooms would not be ready until 3pm - what!?  So the bags to the concierge, and these intrepid marathoners from Australia head straight to the Marathon Expo to pick up the running tags and all the gear. Lucky we got there early - thousands of people followed us - well, I don't think they followed us, but followed after us! The Marathon Expo was a temple to sports paraphernalia retail - and of course we couldn't leave there without the London Marathon t-shirt, and some London Olympics gear!

So onto the Tube and back to the hotel to try to checkin - now feeling absolutely dead tired.  But, our suspicions were raised when we walked into the hotel foyer and it was full of people lining up and milling around - we were politely informed that the 'computer' system was down and it 'might' be back up at 3pm! By this stage, I was thinking that we had checked into an expensive Faulty Towers -and then I learned that there was a football match on in town, Barcelona v. Chelsea.  I guess these are little challenges for the good folks and hoteliers of London ahead of the Olympics.

So when I got to my room, sleep, a shower and room service had me feeling almost human again!