Part 1 is available here.

That evening I had a bath. The hotel was built over a set of tunnels, one for the trains in and out of London and one for the various tube lines running from St Pancras, the tube station attached to King’s Cross. As I submerged myself in the warm water a train ran underneath us and the water made a strange bubbling noise around me. Having not eaten Mexican food recently I was perplexed, and it took me a minute to figure out what the noise was.

Perhaps it was the fatigue from the long day, perhaps it was the alcohol, or perhaps it was the insanely comfortable bed, but that night I slept better than I had for months. Even the trains failed to wake me, and the rattling of their passing beneath us was strangely soothing. I didn’t wake until the alarm sounded at 8 am the next morning, and while eating breakfast I discussed various futile plans with Jarred for stealing the mattresses.

The morning was bright and sunny and after getting dressed, I leant against the window frame watching the trains rattle past until Jarred was also ready. We made our way to the nearest entrance to St Pancras, but the lift here had been closed without warning. Fortunately, at another entrance a different lift was available, and we went underground. We bought our tickets in the unbelievably stuffy ticket hall, and then hopped on the Piccadilly line to Green Park, which was the nearest accessible tube station to the Science Museum, our destination.

We went straight from the tube station to Green Park, and the fresh air was a welcome relief from the heated stuffiness of the underground tunnels. We had coffee at one of a small chain of coffee shops found in central London’s parks, and then made our way towards Buckingham palace.

Once Jarred had snapped the obligatory photo of me in front of the palace we made our way through Hyde Park, along the edge of the Serpentine. The day was warm and soon we shed our coats to hang them off the back of the wheelchair. About half way along the Serpentine we spotted a heron wading through the water, slow and graceful as if it were royalty.

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Eventually, we arrived at the Science Museum on exhibition road, adjacent to the Natural History Museum. Here, I met Jarred’s mother and little brother for the first time, and we went to the café in the museum to eat lunch together. Jarred’s sister, who worked at the Imperial College next door joined us for her lunch hour, and we sat together, laughing and joking as if we had known each other for years.

After this, Jarred’s sister returned to work, and the rest of us explored the Science Museum together. The space exhibition had life-size models of rocket engines, the moon-landing station, and even one of the surprisingly small Hubble telescope. Tim Peake even had an exhibition dedicated to him as the first Brit to enter the International Space Station, and the first Brit to undertake a spacewalk. The floor above housed an entire room dedicated to genetics and DNA, where I was able to answer a plethora questions from Jarred’s little brother, who is an aspiring scientist himself. I was in awe of the model built by Crick and Watson to discover the structure of DNA, one of the biggest and most important discoveries of the 20^th century. Above this was the environment floor, and after this a floor dedicated to flight. This including model Spitfires, and even a model of the first machine ever to fly.

All too soon the afternoon came to an end, and we were saying goodbye to our family. The sun was still shining as we traveled back through Hyde Park and Green Park, returning to the tube station just as rush hour began to kick in.

Having bought an unlimited travel ticket for the whole day, we were able to bypass the ticket hall in Green Park tube station, instead going straight to the Jubilee line headed for Stratford. While the platform was crowded, we didn’t have to travel far to the raised platform for wheelchair access, and within a minute the strong breeze that announces the presence of a train far before you see or hear it rushed past us. The tube squealed to a halt and we were able to squeeze into the wheelchair space inside the carriage. Jarred clicked the wheelchair brakes on to prevent any inertia-related incidents, and then we were off, howling down the dark tunnels and stopping every few minutes. I felt a little like Katniss Everdeen headed to the Capitol of Panem, except I didn’t have to worry about a murdering contest at the end of the line.

At each stop more and more people climbed aboard the carriage. Soon every seat was taken, as was most of the standing room too. It was easy to identify the regular users of the tube; they were standing unaided in the carriage, looking at their phones or reading a book with their bags between their ankles, swaying gently with the motion. The heat of so many crammed into such a small place was overwhelming and I had to avoid several bags held on a level with my head, but I still had to wonder what all the fuss of the London Underground during rush hour was about, as I had faced far worse before.

Eventually, the train sped into daylight, and I was momentarily blinded after the darkness. Minutes later it came to a halt at the end of the line, Stratford. We left the tube and wandered over to Westfield, the humongous shopping centre over-looking the 2012 Olympic park, where we ate our evening meal.

Part 3 is available here.