Today we caught the coach up to
London so that we could be fingerprinted for our Russian visas. In order to
guarantee that we would be able to get everything done in time, we booked an
early coach up and a late coach back, which meant that we had quite a lot of
time to kill in London, so we decided to walk from the coach station to the
visa office and back. The (long) walk took us via a whole array of iconic
London locations, including Buckingham Palace and the Mall, Trafalgar Square,
St Paul’s Cathedral, Chinatown, Charing Cross Road, Fleet Street, the Strand and
Pall Mall. We even had time to duck into the British Museum on the way there
and the National Gallery and Berry Bros and Rudd (my favourite wine merchant) on the way back.
When we finally reached the visa
office we were amused to discover that it’s located virtually next door to the
flat that was once occupied by my Sydney school friend Philip – a flat that for
a long time acted as my pre- and post-clubbing hang out (many’s the
mid-afternoon I woke up on Phil’s sofa bed after an all-nighter at Fabric, which
is conveniently located about ten minute’s walk away). After we got there, we
had to wait a while for the courier to arrive with our passports and
applications, which had been organised by Real Russia, the travel agency that
has sorted out our Russian train tickets. The actual taking of the fingerprints
was then dealt with quickly and efficiently and, hopefully, in a week’s time
we’ll have our visas.
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