London – Or how getting lost can get you to your destination

Thursday, 10:30 PM October 11th, 2007

I fell asleep before ice cream.
me
The flight over was mostly uneventful. There was meal service. And it was tasty. However… I fell asleep before dessert. Oh well. When I landed I was in London. I had made it. The was the first step in what is sure to be a grand adventure. The excitement is exhausting me. Maybe that’s jet lag.
London is… well… here’s my opinion. London is filthy. Heathrow airpoirt is probably the worst laid out, dirtiest, most poorly maintained airport ever. You could scrape the dirt off the walls with a paper cup. But just outside the terminal was a little shopping area where I grabbed a coffee and smoked what is to be my final cigarette.
The mall had more the feeling of a hotel check-in / casino. But the coffee was ok.

I spent 30 minutes looking for a way to get to the train that would take me to Central London. It should have been easy right? I mean… I’m in a airport / train station. You would think that everything would be marked. And it is… well… except for the trains of course. But when it got there… well hot shit! Welcome to the future.

The train was totally silent and enormous. It looked brand new and the seats were so comfortable. I am glad I took the local as opposed to the express. More time to enjoy the comfort of the seats. But upon arrival at Paddington station… well… filthy again. So much dirt. I got lost trying to get to the youth hostel. Took two wrong trains. And yet… here I am still. The redundant system of the London Underground is magnificent. No matter how fucking filthy it is.

Check in – I’m asked by a German for my papers. I giggled. I wanted to punch him and say “No Ticket” but he was a nice guy and I don’t punch people. His name was Yann. He kept apologizing as he thought he was delaying me. But I didn’t mind. I talked about my plans and he seemed to get really excited at times. He loves Paris. I will try and get a picture of him tomorrow when I leave. There’s a really cool girl I met in line to check in. It was a long line. There’s a couple of classrooms, a soccer team and many more groups staying here and they were all in front of us. We started talking about our trips but then moved into politics. She looked a little shocked at times. Apparently the rest of the world has no idea what is going on in America.

I went to go get my camera to head back out into the dirty London air. But it was dead and I had no UK adapter. but the store across the way did. I purchased 2 pounds (approx $4) of post cards, the adapter and trail mix. Plugged in the adapter and camera. It started charging. Thank god. I was afraid I was going to blow it up.

it was at this time that jet lag caught up to my sorry ass. I was out. Several hours later I was awoken when one of the hostel staff asked me to take my shoes off the bed. I came down to write this. and now back to sleep. No pictures today. Plenty tomorrow.

wait… whoa… 6 extremely good looking german girls just took the table behind me. Well.. ok. Better to bed before I do something stupid like drool on myself.