Well actually, it was the correct bus, just going the wrong way, and we realized this about 15 minutes away from our initial starting point.
It wasn't that we were confused - the buses in Greenwich were running on diversion due to road construction, so the stop we ordinarily would have picked up the bus at was closed. We saw the #188 coming - stopping at a nearby street - and we ran for it before checking which way it was headed. Minor technicality, and it was easily fixed, just ironic that we "got lost" for the first time in our last week in London.
Apparently, however, we have been riding the wrong bus all along.
We most often rode the #188 or #199 when we should have been riding the #319 to sit beside Jack Black!
The story in The London Paper informed me that, "School of Rock star Black refuses to have drivers, preferring to travel round London on the city’s iconic red buses."
Still can't wait to see Gullivers Travels so I can see Jason Segal and Jack Black on the University of Greenwich campus. I'll probably be able to point out the window in King William's hall where I sat in class while they filmed outside! :)
A Bollywood movie was being filmed in our last week on campus.
I've determined, however, that London had it in for me that day. Later, I did a little adventuring to find the Saab dealership of London. A random destination, I will admit, but I was trying to pick up a few 2009 brochures for a great mentor - Dan Orzano - who collects them. So I looked it up - found Saab City on a road called "The Highway" and got street by street directions to it from the DLR stop - which would be useful if any of the roads once I got off the train had street names. (They did not). No one to ask for help, so I wandered. Luckily I was a little perceptive, remembering one street was a one-way (which I found) and remembering it wasn't far from a large church (which I also eventually found: St. George-in-the-East).
They didn't have a graveyard, per se, but rather a gravewall?
And an old nature study museum that before it was a mortuary (or so the sign claims).
So I'm finally on "The Highway" and see the dealership - but then I had to get across 4 lanes of traffic without stop lights for pedestrian crossing. There were designated areas where pedestrians could cross and presumably the traffic would stop for you. (They did not). Uncommon for Europeans - normally if you even think about putting a foot out onto the crosswalk they are squealing their brakes to let you pass.
So I played some frogger, dodging cars - and a couple of "lorries" (semi trucks) and snapped this photo in the middle of the road.
Mind you, the dealership's front wall is all glass. So everyone working there can see this spectacle of me crossing the road... then I'm poking around the front and side of the building trying to find a door INTO the dealership. All of the workers are still staring at me. Finally, when I look beyond the point of frustration, they point me around to the back where the door comes of a parking lot. (Ok, that makes sense... people buying cars probably drive up in cars... but they could take the Tube there to drive home in their new car). So if I hadn't caught quite everyone's attention before, literally every eye in the dealership was on me when I walked in. I can only imagine the conversations when I left about the crazy American tourist who couldn't cross the street, couldn't find the door, and then wanted to take some brochures back home to the states... but I found it!
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