London was the first destination on my path to enlightenment since it was the cheapest destination to fly into. I had not originally planned to spend any time in London because it is so expensive, but I change my mind at the last minute and figured I might as well check out the city while I am there. It was also nice to start out the trip in an English speaking country to kind of ease into things.
I arrived at the airport at 7:30 in the morning. I was planning to couchsurf with a host I had been in contact with, but I had forgotten to write down the directions to his place. The lady checking passports at the airport was not too pleased when I told her this, but she reluctantly let me into the country anyway. I quickly proceeded to find an overpriced internet terminal so I could copy down the directions from my e-mail.
The airport is located north of the city a bit so I needed to take a train into town. I was pointed in the right direction by the train help desk guy and grabbed the train at about 8:30. I was supposed to change over to the tube (subway) to reach my actual destination. This proved to be quite a challenge since I walked in completely the wrong direction for a while and had to have some maintenance guys point me to where I actually needed to be going. I finally managed to find the right train and get to my stop.
I had told my host I would arrive at his place around 9:00 since he usually leaves for work at 10:00. It was about 9:30 by the time I got off the tube. It was also, in typical London fashion, raining slightly. I walked the 9 or 10 blocks to his place and arrived at 9:50. Luckily he answered the door looking like he just woke up. The guy’s name was Steve.
He gave me a brief tour of his tiny flat where I met another couchsurfer, one who cannot be pinned down by such a fragile and earthly thing as a name, but for convenience will be referred to as “Ken.” Ken is a super cool dude who had been traveling for some time before I met him, and who’s soul is still off experiencing the world as I write this. Ken and I left shortly thereafter while Steve headed to work. We found a place to consume the requisite English breakfast, and then just sort of wandered around the rest of the afternoon. We strolled down the markets on Portobello Road, through Hyde Park and the Kensington Gardens, and saw Buckingham Palace before heading up to the Soho area to find some food.
The Portobello markets were really cool with cheap produce and a variety of other items available for purchase. Buckingham Palace was about what you’d expect, crowded with tourists all pining for a photo of the famous Queen’s Guard. My favorite part of London was the parks/gardens. They were huge and gorgeous with a large variety of plant life and wide open green areas. They also weren’t packed with people which was nice. This preference will become a pattern throughout the rest of my posts.
After some over-priced Indian food and a quick stop at a clothing store, Ken and I headed for a bar called “The Couch” for a London Couchsurfing meet-up. It was about 19:00 at this point (yes, I’m going to use 24-hour time while talking about Europe). The meet-up had a huge turnout and more people kept showing up. I got to speak to quite a few cool people which convinced me to try to surf in Paris, my next destination. I also met a couple of Americans who were headed to Paris next and made plans to meet up with them one day. I left the bar at about 20:30 to head back to my host. Ken chose to stay at the bar and try to find a new host for the night.
When I got back to Steve’s flat, I found two more couchsurfers had arrived in the meantime, one guy from Kentucky named Marcus, and another from Argentina who’s name I cannot remember. Both were cool people, but I was sort of unsure where we were all going to sleep given the tiny size of the flat. After a bit of getting to know each other, we headed out for a local pub near Steve’s place. The pub was pretty cool, it had 4 or 5 little rooms separated by short walls that did not reach the ceiling. To cross from room to room we needed to pass through a small door reminiscent of Wonderland, with beer as our shrinking potion.
We stayed for a few drinks and chatted for a while, with the conversation turning more and more to politics as the volume of beer increased. The pub closed at midnight and we headed back to Steve’s place for 1 more drink before crashing on his floor. It was a tight squeeze but we all managed to fit.
At about 1:30 Marcus and I left Steve’s place due to an altercation, the details of which are not important (and don’t bother asking in the comments). What is important however is that we were wandering around an unfamiliar town at 1:30 in the morning, myself exhausted and still slightly drunk. I should mention that I hadn’t slept in about 36 hours at this point (minus the ~1 hour I had just gotten). We wandered around lost for a while and finally found a pay phone to call a hostel to get directions. Unfortunately the guy working the desk at the hostel did not know the city very well and could not tell us where we were exactly. So we wandered around a bit more before Marcus thankfully figured out where we were. We caught a bus downtown to a different hostel, checked in, and crashed at around 4:00. We intended to wake up at 9:30 in order to shower before check-out, but instead ended up sleeping straight through until the bell for checkout startled our tired bodies out of bed.
I split with Marcus at this point and wandered out into the rain in search of an internet cafe. Instead I found breakfast and coffee, which were more vital to my survival at that point anyway. I changed clothes and cleaned up in the bathroom of the little cafe before managing to find an internet cafe nearby. I posted a message to the “Last Minute Couch Paris” group on Couchsurfing looking for a place to stay while I was there. In the meantime I figured out how to take a cheap overnight bus from London to Paris that left at around 20:30. I headed to the bus station to purchase tickets and then go from there. I was carrying my full pack around this entire day, which I estimated to weigh around 20kg (44 lbs) or so.
After finding the bus station and purchasing tickets, I decided to go see some more “sights.” I walked past Westminster Abbey, which was impressively huge. I was going to take pictures but came to the unfortunate realization that I had left my camera, along with a couple of books and other belongings at Steve’s place. I thought they were lost forever but I was able to eventually recover the items at the end of my trip in Dublin.
After the Abbey, I headed in the direction of a design museum I really wanted to check out. Unfortunately I ran out of time and energy before I got there, but I did manage to see Shakespeare’s Globe Theater which was pretty cool. I turned around at that point and tried to take a “shortcut” back to the bus station… big mistake. I made this mistake more than once while I was in Europe: if you follow a street headed in one direction, there is no guarantee that it will continue heading in that direction, take you where you thought you were going, or even keep the same name the entire way. So I paid for my arrogance by wandering around lost for about an hour before figuring a way out of the labyrinth. I got back to Victoria Station with plenty of time to spare, so I grabbed some lunch and internet and waited for the bus. A couchsurfer from Paris had contacted me at this point saying I could stay with him. He gave me a general location of his place, and I told him to send me his address which I would retrieve once I was in Paris.
I boarded the bus on time, smelly and exhausted, not having slept or showered in some time. I think I also probably walked over 15 km that day.
London overall was a roller coaster ride. I met some really cool people, but my karma deficit also seemed to follow me across the pond, resulting in a scattered series of unfortunate events. The city seems like a cool place to live, with a diverse mix of people and ideas. I was only there for 2 days so I didn’t get to see a lot of it, but I did like what I saw and most of the people I met.
