Surprise!
My feet may be back on US soil, but the adventures shall never end! Besides, I never finished shoveling adjectives, similes, cliché one liners and excessive descriptions into your prying eyes and hopefully entertained guts. Let the cheese continue, as I FINALLY tell you the tale of my London voyage…
I came across a little pickle in the road at the train station in Paris. It seems, one might want to have a plan or maybe just rehearse a little bit before greeting the UK border control. Sure, if you have a legit reason for visiting the country you can get through, absolutely. All you need is a little Crisco (the only reasonable use for the product), a wiggle and a passport. However, when you are merely a floater with no occupational goals, no destination or return flight and you naively tell the officer this with a backpack on your back, bubble gum in your mouth and hair twirling around your finger, well, you’re probably not going to like what they have to say. After I gave the officer my honesty, he gave me (in his words) “the benefit of the doubt” and a stamp in my passport authorizing a thirty day visit to the country. This was significantly less than the six months I had originally planned on staying. No worries though, I wasn’t about to let “Grumpy” ruin my buzz, and so, through the gates I “skipped”, with a cocky “give me my passport back” smile and an “I’ll figure it out later” mentality.
Line, scanner, line, scanner, trainnnnnnnnnn, nothing exciting and scurrrrgeeee! “We have arrived at our destination, London. Thank you for traveling Parisian railways.” Farewell my frisky French friends, hello delightfully charming and interestingly beautiful Brits.
The London train station has a mass of corridors; I was Harry Potter. I could finally read all of the signs and was able to easily find the line for taxis. Two weeks ago I would have mapped out my hostel from the train station, birds-eye-viewed the streets, and made a list of landmarks to follow. Essentially a “treasure map”, but this day wasn’t two weeks earlier, and therefore, I was losing momentum, only subtly, but losing nonetheless. So, instead of a typical Nancy Drew adventure, I herded in line like the rest of my fellow army figurines – aka travelers. One-by-one we entered our taxis like product on a conveyor belt.
My cab driver was super sweet. He transferred my luggage, opened my door, and naturally stepped into the right side of his flag-painted, hackney carriage vehicle. “Can you take me to 121 Borough High Street, please?” I asked, as I leaned into the glass window that separated us. The lean really wasn’t necessary, but that’s what all the classy girls do in the movies, with their elbow high gloves and designer hats. I was thoroughly enjoying my first London city moment.
It turned out that my hostel was a good hour and a half walk from the station. I couldn’t check in to St. Christopher’s until three pm and since it was just casually past one o’clock I thanked my delicate driver (in London they do exist!), gave him a generous handshake, stowed my belongings in the lobby luggage room, and walked across the street to a little market with ubber cheap goods to grab lunch.
Once I was inside I realized it was more like a Big Lots for food. I just spent fifty bucks on a cab, so it would have to do. I snagged a tub of organic tomato bisque soup, oyster crackers, bananas – for the mornings – and some cold medicine. I could already feel the new London “bugs” kicking out the Parisian “mites” and setting up camp in my organism. No way am I going to get sick on the last leg of my trip, so I popped two capsules, right there in the medicine aisle.
London – the last leg of my trip (sigh)… such a sad thought. I meandered over to the checkout line, half conscious of the human rotary belt I was on, thinking about how much time had passed and how I was ALREADY in London. LONDON – the last leg! “Am I ready to go home? Hmm. Wow… I … actually did it…” I thought to my smiling, dazed self, as the cashier yelled, “Next! … Ma’am? Next, please!” Ooops! I pulled myself out of my temporary conversation with, well, myself.
I walked back to the hostel with my groceries swinging in hand and with hopes of not getting killed by London road ways on my first day in the city. There are arrows and font on the streets that say ‘look left’ or ‘look right’. I would nonchalantly look through the bottom of my sunglasses to check these paint marks, trying not to be spotted a foreigner (pretty sure people could tell). I crossed the street safely and entered my current home.
Out of all of the hostels I had stayed in thus far, this was the scariest one. I hadn’t anticipated this, being in London and all. I expected $$, but London IS dated back two millennia and the British DO have their dark days, their ghost stories, their Jack (the Ripper), so yeah – duh!
St. Christopher’s Inn was a musty and dim hotel from the 1800’s. Railings wobbled to the touch, like bobble heads, and moldings were densely losing shape, increasing in width each spring from the annual “fix-all” paint job. The floors had surpassed their years of squeak and had now entered their time of wilt. They were shined to mirror standards, but they were discolored like the edges of old photographs. They ebbed and flowed like the subtle waves in a bath tub currant, higher in the corners and against the walls where the waves of wooden age collided. Maintenance had been through, it seemed, and updates had been made, but the Inn was in no comparison to the standards of St. Christopher’s in Paris. In Paris there were bunk beds with stainless steel ladders, thick, light-repelling curtains, fresh duvets sealed in “plastic confidence”, wide hallways, and oh yeah, the bathrooms, they were not even in the same century. No big deal though, it was a roof and a key and that’s all I needed. Besides, I liked feeling far from home, that’s what I was here for.
Down the wooden hallway, past the banister, across the bridge to Backpacker Island (luggage room) and through the gate (doorway) to gumdrop buttons (beanbags and old ragged couches) I took my first meal in London. This is where I met Christian, a Rastafarian Australian dude, with a six pack of Newcastle, dreadlocks and wait for it …drummm roll …a banjo. HA! Cool guy. We hung out in the hang out room for a few hours, talking about adventures and his endeavors in London. Poor guy apparently came to England to be with a girl he had met in his previous travels, but after arriving she phoned him and asked him not to come (sad face).
Christian was fun for about six hours, after six, I understood why his girl had phoned. Christian shared his ale with me and introduced me to a few people who also joined us for drinks. We ordered fish bowls of vodka, rum and juice from the hostel bar; they even had floating plastic ice cube fish and umbrellas. Our foursome soon turned to an eight-some, then a twelve-some, and finally a twenty-some. We sat on beanbags, chairs, stools, and rugs; together as travelers, as friends. Bottles of champagne circulated, Ipod’s alternated music, Danish beer spilled on the crouches of drunken men, all while a symphony of languages weaved through the room. We took shifts to the liquor store, LAUGHED like hyenas, spouted out digs and cultural puns (all in good fun), and played several hands of the global card game – Waterfall. Day 1 was great; it was another slow motion reel for my mental memory box.
When the clock struck midnight the hangout room turned into the midnight scene from Cinderella, except this time, it wasn’t the girl who lost her “glitter”, it was the boy who lost his charm. The liquor started to do work and Christian began to change. I found out I could be cute far too many times in sixty minutes. ‘Thank you’ and ‘awh, haha’ responses just didn’t cut it after the fifth time. One of the gals I met there, Estelle, noticed Christian’s old man like tendencies and she came to my rescue. Estelle and I snuck out for a cig and decided to pop into the bar next door instead of returning to the love fest – good decision! We met Shaun and Adam while waiting in line, both from London, and shared a few drinks and a few strange convo.’s once inside. We actually talked about the irony of pet names, and how we all mutually agreed that people names for pets are irrational. Please imagine how irrational this topic was for a couple of irrationally wasted strangers to be having at an irrational hour of the night – oh the irony! PS – for the record, I like people names for pets, but they were cute and the conversation was fun; I sold out.
The next morning I had a date with myself to take a free walking tour. I rose with the birds and crept out of my gritty bed. For five hours I had suffocated myself in a duvet-less, steel wool afghan, that God only knows how many people used before me and before being washed. So the second the sun was up, was the second my tired, hungover body eagerly leaped from the “sheets” and fled from its temporary imprisonment. Still in my pajamas, I moseyed down the crippled spiral staircase -keeping a look out for Christian – and snagged the comp. breakfast. The one good thing about this hostel was the wheat toast! If I had at all, then I couldn’t remember, the last time I ate wheat toast on this trip; which was consistently a staple in my American life.
My walking tour started out a little rocky. The meeting place took me twice as long to find as it should have, but fortunately, I wasn’t the only one that was late. Jareb, a charming Seattleite snuck in with me. Jareb had just come from a five year teaching stint in – you’re not going to believe this – South Korea. He was “just touring Europe” for a couple of months, before meeting a few friends in Northern Africa, where they would then drive down to Southern Africa to build a school. Yeah, this guy, this was the guy. As you can imagine I hardly learned a thing about London during this walking tour, but I now know a LOT about Jareb. Ha.
What I do remember from the tour was stopping at Buckingham Palace, West Minister Abbey, The House of Parliament and 10 Downing Street – where the Prime Minister lives. Timing was apparently my thing on this day. First, my tardiness provided my meeting Jareb – an awesome guy who wanted to tell me everything there is to know about a life in Korea – and then, as we waited at a light, heading toward 10 Downing, Jareb and I noticed a man in front of us wearing an ear piece. Childishly, we pretended to be celebrities who had forgotten to mention the undercover body guards that follow us around at all times. We joked, but quickly realized they must be there for a reason; there must be someone near us that needs security. Low and behold, three feet in front of us stood the Prime Minister, Mr. Hugh Grant himself – haha j/k. David Cameron in the flesh, ladies and gents, David Cameron. Jareb and I discretely shared this exciting information with our tour guide, but unfortunately, he didn’t handle it the way we had hoped. “Hey you guys?! It’s the Prime Minister!” he bellowed. Nice, that was classy. Cameron’s security moved in closer and their pace took off like an accelerated gas pedal. Poor guy (not literally of course $$), he can’t even walk around his home (I should say chateau) without an invasion – occupational pros and cons, I suppose.
After a brief moment of political excitement, everyone settled down and resumed the tour. We grabbed a few snaps inside the infamous red photo booths and a pic in front of St. Stephens Tower – Big Ben, before poppin’ a squat in front of the House of Parliament for story time. The story was a gruesome one, illustrating how the lives and bodies of those who committed treason in the late 1800’s would have been “dealt with”. Jareb volunteered himself to act as a criminal and tugged me on “stage” with him. Our tour guide narrated the historical and gritty details, limb by limb, section by section, of how a trader’s body was dismantled, as Jareb and I made a scene.
I severed his arms, he thrashed and wailed; I cut off his tongue, he screamed and quivered; I sliced off his knee caps, he fell to the ground (just wait there’s more…); I twisted my dagger into his gut and pulled out his intestines like a flag on a stick; he lived on, but a life of sheer agony, and lastly, before the inevitable decapitation, it was ordered by law of London, to eradicate… his manhood. Like a tossed cucumber and a Miracle Blade, game over.
The crowd applauded as if we were at a national championship game. Jareb, broken and defeated on the dewy grass, was silent as I walked triumphantly around him sword in the air and a man in my step. Jareb eventually stood and with hand in hand we took our bows, laughed, and enjoyed the last of our fifteen minutes of fame.
The tour was over, but the day had just begun! Jareb and I decided to grab lunch, so we shot a few more photos for the grand-kids of the gorgeous historical buildings and headed to what was my first official traditional English dish. We went to a little pub in the Boroughs and started with a couple tall boys. I of course ordered the fish and chips (had to!) and Jareb ordered a veggie burger (is it strange that this was a turn on for me?). After a leisurely lunch (FULL of details on what it’s like to live in South Korea for five years: how he adapted, things to overcome and where to start) we left our dark and quaint little pub to explore London. We walked through all the interconnected parks: St. James Park, Green Park and Hyde Park. We ventured around the Embassy, shooting pictures, noting strange people, the styles in London, and the oddity of a monarchy still in existence; our views are both here-nor-there and we reached the agreement that it’s simply, interesting – with a hmph and a smile.
We walked for miles, all the way to Notting Hill and the infamous, Portobello Road. Incredible street markets sprawled in every direction; there wasn’t a color in the rainbow that wasn’t present in this extraordinary perusing wonderland. Adorable little two or three story boutiques lined up, like cartoon homes with faces, awaiting the entry of their guests. We travelers, and locals, swarmed in and out of doorways like ants, each time appearing again in the streets of color carrying or eating yet another unique treasure. Money could not be tucked away for safe keeping here; my pockets must have smelt like ashes because the money within was definitely burning holes. The street lights popped on, a splinter of a second from one another, reminding me of the opening to Fraser – A! B! C!…. do, Do, DO!
Jareb and I (mostly I) spotted a super cute gelato shop that made me want to hold Jareb’s hand, dance in the streets and sing like Mary Poppins. If you hadn’t already guessed, I fancied myself a bite of frozen creamy ice and fancy I did. Coconut gelato was my favorite flavor. I delicately ate my conservative portion (about the size of a golf ball) with a miniature spoon to boot. FYI – Europe doesn’t “super size you” like the US does – if you hadn’t already heard. We exited the shop and shuffled over to a fruit stand a few boutiques away. Jareb laid on the ice cream guilt by purchasing two small tangerines. An hour or so passed since the street lights sang and shops were starting to iron down. Our wallets were angry and our bellies cried out, begging us not to taste another treasure; so we rounded the corner, in the opposite direction, on the opposite side of the street, still window shopping like a melancholy pair of newlyweds and headed “home”, to “Chateau” St. Christopher’s.
It was a hike back to the hostel with several metro connections. The gentle flow and melody of Portobello Road wore off and was replaced by a buzzing and swishing of clothing, shoes on concrete, and wheels on rails. When you are but a few in a meadow, you move gracefully, like happy cattle, but when the wolves come running through, at least ten from every direction, well, you might as well have been smacked on the bleep with a hot poker because you get moving just as quickly as the rest. The rush and push and hurry of the metro woke us from our perusing slumber and invited us to share a night cap instead of parting ways. We went down to the bar below our rooms and continued on with what had been a solid day worth of effortless conversation.
Jareb was off to Africa in the morning, so when the sun broke through the clouds of London we both reluctantly pulled it together to share a final corn flake and wheat toast goodbye in the café before his cab arrived. The wheat toast was bitter sweet and somehow didn’t taste so great on this farewell morning…
To be continued…
Akoss The Sea 