Today started off bright and early at 4 AM. Our flight wasn’t until 8 AM, but it took a while to get to the airport and we didn’t know how the bus schedule would be. I laid in bed until about 4:30 because I didn’t need to shower. While doing this, I assessed our options for getting to the airport. The bus took longer and was bit expensive. I ended up calling a taxi for the five of us since it would be quicker and cheaper.
We packed up all of our stuff, and checked out of the hostel. I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the amount of whiskey and Guinness I had the night before, but I had a raging headache this morning. This made the taxi getting there and waiting in security pretty damn miserable. On top of that, every one of our bags got selected for extra screening. Talk about annoying.
After getting through, we still had two hours to kill and found a Starbucks to sit in. One water and giant yogurt later, I was feeling much better. It was soon time to board the plane, and we were off to London.
The Plane
The flight was only an hour long and pretty ordinary. I had a cramped middle seat, but the flight was short enough that I didn’t mind too much. I also noticed on the plane that there was no row thirteen. I had heard buildings not having thirteenth floors, but this was pretty odd.
My Lack of leg room
One short flight later, we touched down in England. Most budget airlines don’t fly into Heathrow, so we were at a further airport called Luton. It was technically considered part of London, but still pretty far from the main city.
Sebastian was forced to check his carry-on, so we had to wait a bit for his bag. All of us were extremely tired and had absolutely no energy. We found the bus to our area in London, and were annoyed to learn it cost 12 pounds or about $17. Our flight only cost about $24 for reference.
It took us an hour to fly 400 miles and an hour to drive 32 miles. Travel can be weird sometimes.
We were staying in Zone 2 of London. We got off the bus and immediately went to the hostel. All I wanted to do was take a nap, but we couldn’t access our rooms until 2 PM.
Our hostel actually looks super quaint and seems like it had a slight chance of being haunted.
The hostel.
We ditched our bags in the luggage room and went to find lunch. We may not have been able to sleep, but we could get some energy through food. We passed some sketchy place called Chicken Cottage, that advertised two double cheeseburgers and fries for four pounds. This seemed like a good deal, but we wanted to check out the supermarket first.
This was mainly to figure out dinner, but we were keeping our options open. We didn’t buy any food yet, but planned to make a stir-fry for dinner. Who would have thought my first hour in London would be spent in a somewhat depressing supermarket.
We left the supermarket and settled for the Chicken Cottage. For some reason, the man working there really didn’t want us to order the combo. He said it would take 15-20 minutes, but we didn’t care. He said it wasn’t a proper sandwich, but I think he just didn’t believe in their product enough.
About fifteen minutes later, we got our food and it was exactly what I needed. Cheap, filling, and greasy food. A little part of me wishes it was 5 Guys, but I couldn’t complain. They also had really weird ketchup. It was bright red and oddly sugary.
After eating, we headed to out first and closest tourist destination, the Abbey Road crossing.If you don’t recognize this from the Beatles album, stop reading my blog. It was about fifteen minutes from the hostel. After some navigation through a residential area, we finally made it to the famous crossing. There was a handful of other people there doing the same thing.
Sebastian volunteered to take a picture of the four of us crossing. This proved more difficult than we thought. This crossing has some pretty heavy traffic and there wasn’t an ideal spot to take the picture. You had to time the cars, crossing, and photo perfectly.
We waited for our turn and gave it our best shot.
Eh, not the best photo
While taking the picture, some car honked at us for taking too long and we had to run across.
It made for this hilarious picture.
We were content with out attempt and headed for the nearest tube station. We still had some time to kill and wanted to go sight-seeing.
At the underground station, we got our oyster cards and hopped on the tube. Its abut $4 to ride each way, so its kind of expensive. I am spoiled in Grenoble with my unlimited card.
Here’s a picture from the Tube,
We got off the Tube and our first destination was Buckingham Palace. It met all of my expectations and was cool to see both the armed guards and historical ones. It is getting hard to write this blog without just saying every building I visit was pretty. But usually that’s true. I guess pictures are worth a thousand words, so here they are:
Here’s the palace and the big statue.
Here’s a picture from the park with an insane amount of ducks and birds.
We also found out that there are no free public bathrooms in London. Everyone we went to required a pound coin to get in. None of us converted money, but one sanitation worker was nice enough to let us in for free.
We spent the rest of the day walking around London seeing the various sights.
Here are some more stereotypical pictures of London:
Big Pond with the Palace in the background.
Fancy place with overpriced London Eye in the background
Statue of some dead military guy in Trafalgar Square.
Stereotypical London Telephone Booth featuring Ryan who we met up with shortly before. Ryan happened to be in London the same time as us.
After about two hours of walking, we took the tube back and went straight to the supermarket to buy dinner supplies for our stirfry.
We also wanted to treat ourselves, so we got orange flavored Kit Kats and peanut butter oreos for dessert. I was excited by the prospects of the orange flavor.
When we got back we began the cooking. The kitchen was super small and crappy. We realized none of the knives were sharp enough to cut our meat. Harry and I went out to buy a knife.
We found a decent one in a supermarket and got some odd stares from the security guards. They checked both our ideas when buying. I guess England is much different to the US in that regard.
Our stirfry consisted of rice, carrots, brussel sprouts, onions and soy sauce.
Our Dinner and a selfie of Sebastien.
Our dinner was pretty good, though we learned to not buy the cheapest meat from the supermarket again. It was fine once cooked, but was really gross when preparing and poor quality. The kit kats on the other hand, were amazing. Definitely try the orange flavor if you get the opportunity to.
Our dinner table was in the bar area, so we hung out there for a while after dinner. Since didn’t cook, I voluntereed to wash all the dishes.
I took a shower once we headed back to the room and spent some time writing my blog and then watching my friend Kyle’s race online.
Afterwards, I quickly fell asleep after an exhausting day.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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