- London -
I am taking tons of pictures as we are in London. So why aren't there any in this post? Well, you see, I was taking them all on an old Pentax camera, the kind you have to wind manually when a roll of film is finished. I will finish the first roll of film, containing all of my photos from our first few days in London, once we have reached Brighton. It's in a Brighton hostel that I wind the camera wrong, and lose all the pictures. Ultimately depressed beyond belief. And remember, Chelsie lost all of her photos from the trip when her computer crashed after we had come home. Double suck. So sorry, all of the pictures are off of Google :)
As soon as we officially arrive in London, we get off the bus, and decide to do some sightseeing before arriving to our hostel. It is about 7am their time you know. It's a halfhazard way to see the city, drunk with exhaustion, unable to barely focus your eyes on anything in front of you. This day is a blur to me, and I barely remember anything we did. Despite all this, I am thrilled to be here! I love London already and know that if I could live here forever, I probably would.
We see Buckingham Palace briefly and even catch the changing of the guard.
Insert Google image...because I have nothing else. But I would say this is close to what it looked like to me that day.
We get a glimpse of Big Ben and the London Eye, and ride a double decker bus to Hyde Park, all while carting around our backpacks.
I want to tell you that our view looked something like this...what a photo! (Again, all of these are off of Google)...
...But it looked more like this...also great!
And, I made Chelsie take a photo of me in this exact phone booth, much her her dismay (could I be any more touristy?), and sadly, it was another good picture I lost.
By now I am cursing my backpack, and while in the park, I dump a grocery bag full of clothes behind the bench to get rid of anything I won't need and desperately trying to lighten my load.While in Hyde Park, I am hitting a wall. I can't stand anymore, or even sit up. My body is hating me, and screaming for sleep. We find a bench along a path, and I lay down on it. I have no memory of what Chelsie did, and I didn't care, I just tried to fall asleep. I am sure people stared, as it was painfully obvious that we were tourists that looked like we were living in the park or something.
We make our way to our hostel, and to tell you the truth, I have no recollection of how we managed that given our sorry state. I do remember that on our way, we stopped in a small grocery store to get some food for lunch. Chelsie and I were stocking up on some fruit, and I grabbed a plastic bag to put my apples in, and one flew off and stuck to this kid's face beside me. We were so out of it, that we burst out laughing at the kid, and headed to the checkout. This was my first experience paying for something in cash with foreign currency. I fumbled around with my change to pay, asking Chelsie what was what, and finally got out of there! Enough embarrassing myself for one day thanks.
We stayed in a hostel in Kensington (a very posh part of London) called Baden Powell House. It was sort of like a boys and girls club location in a way, with several floors full of rooms which had tons of bunk beds. The higher you went in the building the lower the water pressure became...for example, you may have drips for a shower. Sounds nice hey?
I am jumping ahead though. We check in, dying to fall into a bed and sleep, only to find that we cannot have access to the room until 3pm because they are being cleaned. We have a few hours to wait, and I am ready to lose it by this point. I feel all weird and zombie-ish and out of my mind from exhaustion, I am in a completely new and unfamiliar place, and right now I wish I wasn't there. I want to go home. Okay, not really, but I was really, REALLY, homesick. And not sleeping can do funny things to your head. I am trying to hold it together as we sit in the lounge area watching tv, but I am reaching a breaking point. I burst into tears. I blubber to Chelsie about how I am feeling, that I really miss Kenton, that I feel half crazy, and that I am miserable now. She is very understanding (as she is also very tired), and I am filled with a sense of relief just by spilling my guts at that point. Suddenly, I am feeling slightly better, and that I will make it to 3pm.
We are finally let in to our room. We pick our beds, turn off the lights, and take naps lasting about several hours. I wake up before Chelsie, and still feeling off, I explore the hostel a bit. There are hardly any guests, and the place is quite empty.
I discover on the third floor, a sort of balcony patio thing. The building is on the corner of the street, and the balcony faces the main intersection, and a museum across the street. I basically hang out there, watching people walk by and cars drive around, for a few hours. Staying out here calms my nerves down, and I am getting used to the fact that I can't go home for another 3 and a half weeks..
We had planned on only being in London for a couple of days. At the end of our trip, we would return for another few days before flying home again. Despite being totally jet-lagged, we try to see as much as possible.
I wake in the morning on Monday, May 5th, to a girl staying in our room doing some bizarre pelvic excersie while leaning on the wall. This is a good start to the day.
Realizing that the day before we had rushed our sightseeing, and probably need to do round 2 of London, we go visit Westminster Abbey and Big Ben again. It was incredible! The detail, the size...just everything blew me away. The day we were walking about, the Westminster Bridge was full of tourists, and also people selling things. This was my introduction to...pan handling Euro style, I guess you could say. A lady handed me a little flower, and me, being totally naive, took it. Then Chelsie said, "no!" and I quickly shook my head and gave it back to the lady without really knowing what she wanted. Chelsie late explained that it's people's way of getting you to give money. You take their token, you give them money, and they are everywhere we travel.
We also visit Picadilly Circus. Chelsie is re-visiting places in London she had seen on her last trip there. She was showing me around a little...
Here is a bird's eye view of Picadilly Circus. To give you an idea, it is huge intersection with a big fountain in the middle.
See? Fountain. You can pretend you see me in the picture. But I am not the lady sitting on the steps in the centre with the white t-shirt and pants.
I am blown away by the transit in London. The underground trains are always there when you need to go somewhere. I can't believe how easy it is to get around. Oh look, there I am with Chelsie, you see us? The blondes? We can pretend.
And in the actual subway...
The escalators that take you up, up, up, up back to the ground again. One time we were so far down, we had to take 5 sets of escalators just to get back to the surface again, sheesh that is a long way down!
We take the train to go see Notting Hill and do some shopping. I had not seen the movie before coming here, but I watched it as soon as I was home. Cute homes!
I am on the lookout for cute clothes by now, dying to buy something more stylish. It feels like everyone in London has style, and I am standing out bad. I probably just look like...well, a tourist.
We eat a very english meal of...Subway. We didn't realize that it was actually a holiday, and that nothing would be open come evening. We had also tried to shop Portobello Market, but again, because of this holiday, it wasn't so great.
This is what it would probably look like on a good day though...
So we went back to the hostel that evening, and probably to bed quite early, still trying to turn our body clocks around. The next day we would be taking a bus to the coastal town of Brighton!!
I am excited to continue our adventure, but I am glad we are going to be back in London for the last few days of our trip before we go home. It's beautiful, exciting, and I know we have only scratched the surface...
To Brighton we go...
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