I’ll take B, Italy please Eddy. Lock it in.
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006I’ll take B, Italy please Eddy. Lock it in.
Day three, and so far, so good I’m glad to say. The only slight hitch is that my hostel has no space tonight. I knew that when I booked. I figured they might lose some bookings but it turns out it’s two massive groups, and they’ve all arrived. Damn them. As a nice little aside, one of the groups is a German girls high-school band camp… “And this one time, at band camp”… Hmmmm.
Anyway, this sort of thing happens often enough I understand, so, no problem, I’ll just book another hostel. Or so I thought. Asking at the desk I got a list of good hostels. I called them… all of them. No space. So I went online and did a search. Now, of the hundreds of hostels in London I found three (3!!) with a bed tonight. Two have just the ONE bed too! I’ve ended up with a bed at a place across town. It’s in about the only area of the city which I didn’t explore on foot yesterday, which is good, as it means I might get out and about a bit… The other good thing is that it’s easy to get to Luton airport from this new place, and that’s good because…
I’m going to Italy tomorrow *listens for Leah’s joyful laugh*. That’s right team, tomorrow morning I’ll be checking into the airport (at about 5.30am – yikes!) to catch a flight to Rome. The reason I’m taking such an early flight is that the “cheap” flights are all either really early in the morning or really late at night, and I don’t fancy trying to navigate Rome, with it’s pick pockets and foreign-languages, at night in search of my hostel. I say “cheap” in inverted commas because I paid about 110 pounds all up for the trip. Despite what RyanAir say about flights for less than a pound, I was informed that anything under 100 pounds for this time of year is really cheap, so I snapped it up.
I know many of you might be thinking that I’ve only been in London for a few days, and how could I possibly want to go elsewhere already? Well the 9hours of walking I did yesterday took me far and showed me heaps, but the main reason is that it’s so crowded this week – apparently there’s some event on – and it just so happens that most of my English friends are presently unenviable. They’re either out of town, or working and can’t catch up from what I hear, so I figured I’d get about travel now, and catch up with people eon the way back through. The other real benefit is that it means I’m traveling mid-week rather than at a weekend but the weekend flights are 180% the price, and much tougher to even get.
Yesterday I saw, in no particular order: St Paul’s Cathedral, Millennium Bridge, Tate Modern, London Bridge (from a distance), all of South bank, including the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey (but didn’t go in), Big Ben, the National Gallery and everything incidental between. At St Paul’s I climbed all the way to the top of the dome and the view was absolutely amazing. I have some good reflections which I jotted down there but no time to write them.
Now that my lodgings and flights are sorted, I’m going to use the rest of the day (it’s 2pm now and I’ve done nothing but try to sort out my next few days).. Woah
*Imagine Jesse running up to the counter realizing he has like 1 minute of Internet yet, and trying to get his time extended before being automatically logged off and losing this post*
Phew. OK I’m back.
Anyway, now I have another half hour I might prattle just a little. As I say, rest of today will be more sightseeing. I’ll go back to the Abbey if I can and go in this time (lines were amazing yesterday). In fact I might try to go at 5pm for the Choral mass. That’d be wicked. The other thing I didn’t see yesterday is the British Museum, so between now and then I might do that. Although that’s sounding a bit rushed. I still need to take my crap from the existing hostel up the street, to the new place across town.
Getting across town should be easy enough; the tube here is really, really cool. The lines all connect every few stops. You sometimes have to change 3 different trains in order to get to your destination, but the trains come literally every 2 minutes during the day, and the maps make is so easy to find where you should get on and off. The only issue I have is that they are crazy busy and yesterday in London there was a failure on one of the lines just as I was about to being my traveling which meant heaps of ppl got diverted onto the trains I was going to be catching; making it even busier. Nonetheless, the experience of being crammed in like a sardine is part of it all I guess.
One thing I’ve noticed about London is that, despite what everyone says about it’s cultural diversity, it’s really not that different to Melbourne in terms of the populace I mean, the nationalities which you experience in abundance are different nationalities – there are a lot more Africans here – but the breakdown is pretty similar to back home I think. That is to say, extremely diverse.
The other things you notice about London, if you’re like me, is that there are no bloody bins anywhere! I’ve been carrying rubbish around half the time. Found out today, or rather had it confirmed, as I had expected, that this is an anti-terrorist thing. There are no bins whatsoever at train stations because they are ideal places to place bombs which you remote detonate during rush hour. I knew that already, but when you have a local explain it to you like she expects it to happen any moment, it’s a really culture shock. This is a much bigger city, and much faster paced than anything I have experienced, and the people here, while they don’t live in fear, do seem to be very aware of the serious risk of terrorism hitting them any time.
The size and pace of the city is really noticeable but easy enough to adapt to. People aren’t friendly really, but they aren’t unfriendly. I think a lot of them just aren’t expecting you to smile at them on the tube, for example. They smile back after the initial shock 
Yesterday I was by myself all day, but in the evenings at the hostels I’ve been hanging out with all sorts. My room had a group group of Danes, a Londoner and an American, until today. The Londoner is doing what a lot of them do, which is working in London and commuting back to the country-side at weekends. During the week he has almost a permanent bed at a hostel, in a dorm, but this week he got lazy and they booked it out to someone else because of how busy the city was. He had the night before last with us, then I don’t know what he did because last night was worse than tonight for availability.
Anyway, the Danes (two guys and girl) were all of the one family, spoke great English and were all round very interesting people. The American guy was also really nice. Outside of my room there’s a bunch of Aussies and some Americans who I have spent some time with, but we pretty much sit around with everyone downstairs and talk. People from Spain, South Africa, Germany, France, all over really. As a segway, the 3 aussies are also of one family and their dad works for Quantas. They told me they got return Business class tickets to Europe for $300 Aussie dollars. I could have died!
It was really leveling the other night when I tried to talk to this German chick. Not in German, just in English. Her English was broken but she did so much better than me trying to speak any German at all! I suck! Lost of people have been coming and going, or are only staying a few nights, so I’ve been kinda jumping around.
I’ve decided to book three nights in advance in Rome, and on the advice of one of the guys I met who just came from there, and what I saw online. That is to say; very little availability and all of it bloody expensive! It’s not in a hostel, it’s at a camping ground 3km out of the city. They have a free service which goes into and out of the city every 30 minutes, it’s dirt cheap and they have all sorts of stuff that places closer to the city can’t for want of space, such as a pool. With the weather here having really picked up since I got here (it’s perfect; mid 20s, clear blue and sunny) I can’t wait to hoping the pool and the hot tubs.
So I get into Rome at about 10am tomorrow and will catch a bus out to the camping ground to drop my crap and check in. Then I will catch it back to the Vatican (which is where it stops) and begin my adventures in Italy. I’ve heard from everyone that the Gypsies have been trying to get them, and the pick-pockets are as bad as ever, so I’m going to stay alert.
In terms of food and drink I’ve been kinda good. I’ve broken my diet a few times and paid for it a little. Mainly tiredness and not being able to think. But that could be drunkenness as well I’ve taken to drinking Strongbow Cider instead of normal beer. It’s just like beer but I don’t (think I) have any adverse reactions to it, and it’s really very nice, unlike beer.
Anyway, that’s enough blabbing from me. I think this blog will be a little less artistic than my last in terms of quality of writing; it’s symptomatic of the mode my mind is in at the moment, which is a little all over the place. I think this holiday is something I needed more than I realized; even if I’m just sitting around doing nothing, my mind is racing to get thoughts out of the way and file them, then calm down.
Gotta run gang, hope everything is well for everyone back home.
Love you all,
jess oxox