A Relaxing Weekend in London

Traveling really reminds you the true value of a full night's sleep and things like showers and clean laundry. 

I walked from the hostel to Waverley to catch a bus, working on about three hours of sleep. I took a bus to the airport. I caught a plane to London Stansted. I took a bus to the London City Center. I took the tube to my hostel. All while dragging my ridiculous backpacks. 

I had no plans for London. I had been to London several times before, on family vacations and for soccer tournaments. As well as a trip with my fellow Scottish Parliament Interns! So I was not too concerned about doing any of the touristy things, having done them. I just like being in the city and was perfectly content to hang out in London for a couple days with no pressure to rush from sight to sight. 

I had been traveling for almost four and a half weeks by the time I arrived in London. I had not had a full night of sleep since I left California. I never felt fully clean either. Showering and laundry are a little more difficult to come by while constantly on the move. I had put countless miles on my Converse and my feet hurt. I had been constantly on the move since I arrived. I loved it though and I thrived on it. 

After four and a half weeks though, it was time to spend a day or two catching up on sleep and resting my feet. I needed to recharge and unwind. I wanted to catch up on writing, both my blog and postcards. I just wanted to enjoy a relaxing weekend in a cool city. I was also looking forward to seeing friends I hadn't seen in awhile.

I had picked the hostel out of proximity to Erik's flat. By luck, the hostel ended up being in a very convenient location. (Sometimes it's hit or miss when guessing location and distance.) It was very close to King's Cross Station and also very close to Erik's flat, which made it convenient to hang out with Erik and Helle and also to get around London. 

I had only booked the hostel for Friday night because it and every other hostel in and around London was booked for Saturday night. 

Most hostels have a luggage room due to the high turnover nature of hostels. Guests frequently arrive and leave at times inconvenient to check in and check out. I've seen a variety of luggage rooms in terms of size and security. This one by far was the most chaotic. When I put my backpacks on the first shelf in the back right corner, I was able to walk directly there. When I picked them up it looked like this: 

I had to literally climb over and on top of at least twenty suitcases and backpacks of different heights and distances from each other to get to my backpacks. It was quite the struggle and I stumbled and clawed and fought my way through the haphazard piles of backpacker luggage. I broke a sweat. 

There was a grimy coed bathroom next to the luggage room. I struggled to figure out how to let the least possible amount of surface area of my belongings touch the damp floor. A very flatulent young man shuffled barefoot out of one of the stalls in nothing but a pair of skimpy boxer briefs. He grimaced at me apologetically before rushing out of the bathroom. 

I did the best I could with what I had. I changed my clothes. I used wet wipes for a quick shower substitute. I reapplied deodorant and makeup. (Sometimes if the situation got especially dire I would seek out a franchise of The Body Shop, found commonly in international train stations, and try the free samples of lotion and perfume. I unfortunately did not have that option in this case.)

I walked over to Erik's flat. Erik, Helle, and their friend from Edinburgh, Neil, and I went to lunch at a sushi place called Yo! (exclamation mark included. I like sushi, but not that much.) Yo! was a very brightly colored restaurant that played very loud, peppy music. There was a conveyor belt with multicolored plates of sushi that sped around the restaurant. You just pulled whatever ones you wanted off and then paid for the stack of plates at the end. The conveyor belt moved quickly, though, and I kept missing the California rolls and having to wait for them to come around again. London is a very international city packed full of all sorts of cuisines.

We then went to meet up with Neil's friend at the Shard, which is a new, almost complete shard shaped skyscraper in London. The plan was to have a glass of champagne at the top of the shard. It sounded really cool. Helle and I were talking about how it seemed like one of those things you do for the experience. Like, "ah, yes, I enjoyed the view of London from the top of the Shard while enjoying a glass of champagne." It seemed very posh. There was some dissuasion over the price of entry though and we decided to go check out a market and a pub instead. When I return to London to visit, I would like to do that though. It makes me glad to know that there is always more stuff to do in the cities I've been to so that I can have a reason to return.

Drinking culture is quite different in the UK than from what I was used to in Isla Vista. There are different rules and styles to picking up rounds of drinks for friends and different rules for keeping track of whose turn it is. I tried my best to keep up with the different rules without usurping the order or offending people with my inability to grasp their system. 

The system of buying drinks in Isla Vista, in my experience, was based mostly on the assumption that it would all balance out in the end. Generally, whenever I attended parties or kickbacks, alcohol was generously provided by the hosts. It was kind of a pay it forward system. If one of your friends hosts continually, then you can bring over wine or beer to share with everyone to balance it out. When I went out for drinks with friends in IV or downtown Santa Barbara we would all primarily just buy our own drink for ourselves. The only thing we would ever take turns buying was pitchers of beer. Taking turns buying pitchers wasn't really done in any order, it was just whoever offered. And it seemed to balance out in the end.

I enjoyed very much going out to pubs with Erik and his friends. But between rounds was stressful. It was more of a how do I know when it's my turn? Do I volunteer or is it in like alphabetical order or something? What happens if I accidentally order a beer that is more expensive than everyone else's? What happens if I change my drink for this next round? What happens if I want to sit out a round of drinks? The round buying order and routine seemed more strict and everyone else seemed to be following and keeping track. I had so many questions but I ended up just mouthing to Erik, "my turn?" before each round and he would shake his head until he told me, "you can get this round." Finally. I remembered this a bit from when I studied abroad before. Parties were always BYOB which surprised me at first.

Someday I will learn the British drinking system. As well as the correct cheek kiss combo. And also maybe I'll remember to stop smiling at strangers, because it's creepy everywhere else except for the US, apparently.

After the pub, Helle wanted to check out the Poppy Memorial at the Tower of London. So we walked along the Thames over to the Tower of London.

It was very cool to think as we were walking through the city talking and hanging out together that I was with a friend from back home in California and a friend I had met while studying abroad in Edinburgh in a foreign city together. It felt very cool and adult like. 

The Poppy Memorial at the Tower of London was beautiful.The moat was filled with almost one million ceramic poppies in honor of those who died serving the UK in WWI. Part of the Tower of London had ceramic poppies pouring out of the wall like a waterfall. Everyone gathered around the Tower of London to see the poppies and hear someone read out a list of names of those who died serving.

Each November, people in the UK take part in a Poppy Appeal. I remembered the same thing from my time at parliament. You could buy a small plastic red poppy and the money would be donated to a fund that helped soldier's families, if I remember correctly. Many people pinned the poppies to their clothing and wore them. You could also buy white poppies, which symbolized peace.

We headed back to Erik's flat. Neil is a professional head chef at a swanky restaurant in Edinburgh. He made us a delicious dinner completely from scratch. The main course was pork, potatoes, spinach, and pearl onions in a pineapple chutney. Dessert was berries and cream with caramel and honeycomb from scratch with basil. It was incredible.

I went back to my hostel and met my hostelmates. The lady I was sharing a bunk with was an Italian lady who was attending an English Second Language school in London for a few weeks and was very friendly and eager to try out her English. The other six people in the room were members of Iceland's Women's National Hockey Team. 

"Oh! So are you guys training for the Olympics?" I asked. 

"Oh no," the girl I was talking to laughed. "We're not that good."

They were all very friendly, tall, pale, and blonde. It was their first time in London. They had come to London for a girl's shopping weekend. All of them had come back to the hostel room with armfuls of shopping bags from H&M, Primark, Zara, and more. They had giant empty suitcases that they filled with the day's shopping. I felt very short and grimy with my limited clothing choices in comparison. 

The next day I packed up and stripped my bed and went to meet up with a friend at the National Museum. A feat made more difficult without cell phone access.

I worked with Lena at Portola at UCSB. Lena is studying abroad for the year at the University of Kent, on recommendation from a mutual friend who studied abroad there at the same time I was interning in Scotland. She came up to London from Canterbury to get lunch with me. Lena treated me to a lunch of chicken burgers near the National Museum. We walked around Oxford Street. The only 30 minutes it rained my whole trip was when we were walking down Oxford Street.

I then went and met up with Erik, Helle, and Neil. We went out and walked around Soho and Chinatown. We got Chinese food for dinner. It was very cool being out in the city at night, walking around with friends and talking. London is a huge, lively city. It is packed with people and buildings and lights and traffic. There were so many people out and about milling up and down the streets, shopping, pub hopping, going to restaurants. It's a real city city.

We then headed back via tube to their apartment. 

Erik and Helle generously let me crash on their couch so I wouldn't be wandering around London streets hostelless all night. By the time I had woken up the next morning, Helle had already been awake for awhile to work on a project. She had also gone to Starbucks and brought everyone back coffee. It was one of the most wonderful things ever to wake up to a grande mocha with whipped cream. I didn't even have to get off the couch to indulge in sugary caffeinated goodness.

Erik, Helle, and Neil were going to an NFL game at Wembley that afternoon. Erik kept listing off things that I could do while they were at the game after I told him, "I don't have anything planned for tomorrow, I'm not doing anything."

"Are you sure?" Erik asked, seeming concerned that I would be bored or lonely. "I mean Oxford Street is pretty cool if you want to go shopping. There's the touristy sites downtown, I can show you which tube stop anything is at."

"I just really want to spend tomorrow walking around, maybe go to a coffee shop and write for a bit, relax, you know?"

Neil understood me. "There's some great coffee shops in Chelsea. Perfect for just sitting and hanging out for awhile."

I was very content with hanging out for the weekend, planless. I rarely had a plan, which had its advantages and disadvantages. I ended up spending the afternoon walking around the Kings Cross Area, window shopping, getting food and coffee, and writing. I checked back into the hostel.

Erik invited me back over for a drink after the game. I spent the evening hanging out with Erik, Helle, and Neil at Erik's flat.

Even though I had no plans in London, even my low key weekend in London seemed too short. I had a lot of fun hanging out in the city with old friends.

The next morning I woke up excruciatingly early (you think I would have learned by this point in the trip how painful it is to take 6 am flights and trains) and headed to my last stop of this trip: Stockholm.