Where to start... I met my roommates at LAX on Saturday Jan. 16th and we had a classy dinner at Burger King for about $10 USD. They're great girls and we got along great from the start, I think. I was very happy to see familiar faces though (Britney, Claire, Nimisha and Candice).
After the hellish 10-hour plane ride in which I tried every possible position to sleeping in a plane possible, I failed miserably and ended up getting about an hour worth of sleep on that plane.
Even as I stepped foot on British soil, I still was oblivious to the fact that I was in London. It wasn't until today that it finally hit me.
We arrived to our "flat." I would compare my flat more to a condo. It's three floors, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Being the only male, I get my own room with two "closets" -- the most pathetic excuse for a closet in my opinion and I think this comment will reach consensus among the other girls -- and my own bathroom. I feel bad that aside from my roommates, the other six girls have to share the same amount of space in the flat next door.
After exploring our flats and cheering and screaming in excitement we tried to unpack but without hangers it was virtually impossible. So, our rooms remain a mess. We all went out to dinner, provided by ACCENT, and we went over some logistics for the next week.
The next day we all went to get some nifty pay-as-you-go cell phones for 5 POUNDS! Soon after, we went to Argo, which I would compare to a crappy-cheap imitation of Target were you make all of your purchases through a "catalogue" and you don't get to see what your stuff looks like until you receive it a few minutes after you order it. This was our first culture shock of our trip. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were hungry and jet-lagging, but we got frustrated fairly quickly at Argo and opted not to purchase a lot of things that we wanted. After walking around the hustling city with our purchases, we took the first bus-ride in the city to our flats. Britney, Alex and myself used our "Oyster cards" (bus passes) and sat down on the bus hoping we had hopped on the correct bus. Well, we did, and we definitely got that "look" from the locals riding the bus. That wasn't the worst part. We didn't know how to get off the "bloody" bus! So we asked the bus driver nicely (by nicely I mean someone yelled out, "excuse me, we need to get out!" And then everyone started laughing and told us we needed to push a button. The buttons were the size of my thumb and even after they pointed them out, I couldn't really see them!
London should seriously consider an "Instruction Guide to London for Dummies."
That evening, the nine of us ventured of to Islington, about 15 minutes north from our vicinity. We bumped into seemingly the ONLY restaurant open at 9 p.m.! We were all starving and getting a little moody, but the yummy food made us feel better so we decided we wanted to find a pub. Nothing was opened anymore and it was no later than 11 p.m.! After 20 minutes of hunting for an open pub, we decided it was time to just take the bus back home. We waited at the bus stop and noticed a "panda" and male who was half-cross-dressed as Kate Moss and Pete Doherty. They stumbled our way and asked for a hug and promptly rolled around on the floor. I don't know what type of shock this is but I am almost certain it's not a culture shock! Haha.
This morning we all decided we wanted to go visit London Tower, and I of course had some unfinished business with the Royal Palace because they have one of my tiaras and are claiming it belonged to one of the Queen Elizabeths, but we all know it's mine!
Well, we took the London Tube to London Tower and that was an adventure:
We took some pictures by the "egg" on our way to the entrance:
And then met with our tour guide:
It was such a beautiful place and such beautiful scenery! This is the first time since my arrival that I finally feel I am in London. Maybe the instruction guide for London is.... spontaneity. I'll try and be spontaneous tonight when we all go paintin' the town!
No comments:
Post a Comment