Today we flew into London. Well, actually, today is such a relative word. At 7:20pm EST we flew out of Toronto. The flight was quite a bit of fun. Drinks were free so we took advantage of that. The movie was The Day After Tomorrow, which I've already seen, so I got a chance to do some reading.
At around 1:00am we tried to sleep. After about 15 minutes sleeping, the captain came on the pa and woke us all up for breakfast. So at around 2:10am we landed in London. Except it was 7:10am local time. We had lost a whole night of sleep. So sleepless, we stood in line for an hour to go through customs. Then we went and got our backpacks.
My backpack was insanely heavy. This was my first time really having to wear it outside of my house. So it was here that I realised it was going to be an absurdley painful process of lugging all this stuff around the world. Just horrible. I need to figure out what I can throw out. I'm seriously considering throwing out my $80 sleeping bag, because it takes up so much room and I don't think I'll ever need it.
After we took the underground (the subway.. it's actually called The Underground. I think "The Tube" is just slang for the subway), we ended up at this hostel called The Generator. It's a party-oriented youth hostel. Their motto is "Free Hangover Included".
After we threw our bags in our rooms, we went out and explored London. What a different city from Toronto. There's the obvious differences. Cars drive on the wrong side (which makes me a very very dangerous jay-walker). Then there's the less obvious differences. When walking on the sidewalk, it's natural for me to walk on the right side of people..but for them it's more natural to walk on the left. It took all day to get used to this and not walk into everyone I walk past.
Mostly we just walked around and looked at normal stuff.. for breakfast we went into a convenience store (a Food & Wine) and I got a cheese salad and onion sandwhich. Then we gradually made our way to the river in town, the Thames.
The Thames provides some absolutely gorgeous views, despite it being a brown gross polluted rivers. But standing alongside it you can see so many amazing buildings, the Big Ben (London Tower), this weird giant ferris wheel (the London Eye), the London Bridge, and lots else.
After this, we were getting lazy, so we went and saw an Imax show, Cyberworld 3D. It was pretty cool but pretty cheesy and very much American. And we all fell asleep during it..being sleepless and all.
We went out for some more food at this traditional english pub. I ate a traditional English breakfast -- eggs, bacon (a sort-of back bacon I've never seen), chips, beans and tomato. Sean and sara ate fish and chips. I tried to order a pitcher of beer but he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, so I agreed with him that I just wanted pints.
When we got back we slept from 4 until 9.. which should really mess up my sleep schedule for a while.
For the rest of the night we took it pretty easy. Walked around.. bought some absolutely delicious pizza.. then after Sean and Sara passed out I went down to the hostel bar to watch some kareoke. The only person I ended up talking to was a girl from Toronto.
Right now it's 2:16am, so I'm headed to bed. Tomorrow morning we hope to go see the changing of the guards. We're staying here tomorrow night as well..hopefully we won't be so tired and will be able to have some fun and meet some people. Good night.
