Star Trek 40th Anniversary Convention, Hilton Metropole, London

Yesterday, James and I went to our first Star Trek convention!

We set off at the crack of dawn, on an empty train, save one angry ticket inspector who told James off for feet on seats.. tut tut..

Stopped off in Croydon, and waited for our connecting train up to Victoria..

we couldn't decide whether this was the site of an ex-platform, or if it was the foundations for part of the Croydon regeneration project that they're advertising on the posters.. hmm..

At Victoria we grabbed a bagel and crisps, and then headed straight for the underground, eagerly anticipating carriages full of klingons. Lol, after our careful predictions about who exactly would be accompanying us to the convention, it became apparent as we got closer and closer to Edgeware Road that everyone else was headed elsewhere. We started to wonder if we perhaps had the wrong day, when not even a single pointy eared companion joined us. Mild concern as we departed the train alone.

As it happened, no sooner had we emerged from the station, we saw the Hilton, and a nice reassuring sign telling us that the door wasn't working, and we had to talk through some kind of secret hole in the side of the wall! Actually, it was quite cool. Luckily, when we got inside all the signs for the convention were up, so we merrily wound our way upstairs to the registration desks. We were met with a queue of about 30ish people..

to begin with it looked like it was a no show on the uniform front, although we were quite pleased when we realised the guy in front of us playing on his PDA had a next generation computer theme, including sound effects, hehe! Then, gradually, more people joined us, and the trench coats started to come off..

and by the time we had got our tickets we could see quite a few! <---

(you might need to zoom in to spot them)

This is the view of the foyer at the Hilton, I liked the completely transparent lifts in the centre, they were very posh.

The convention actually took up a couple of floors. The mezzanine level had rooms packed full of merchandise, and minor celebrities (like the crocodile alien that Kirk drops a boulder on); the basement conference centre was taken over for the main programme of the day, namely Q&A sessions with Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, and Patrick Stewart, autographs, the sci-fi auction, and various presentations by Richard Arnold.