The England has Landed

O.K. I have a scenario for you. I want you to imagine yourself in this situation. Now, free your mind and close your eyes (wait now you can't read. ok. open your eyes. shit, your eyes are closed, you don't know to open. My only means of commune are visual. We're stuck. You're just sitting there in your office with your eyes closed in front of the computer like an asshole, and i've got no means to rectify this. Unless of course you never listened to me and didn't close your eyes to begin with, in which case you're already an asshole. That is unless you're blind and have your eyes closed all the time, then I'm the asshole. (How do the blind use computers anyway? (Anyone know brail for sorry :: .: :. :: (spellcheck?) was I writing a blog? Wow, did I get sidetracked) Fucking ADD. Let's get back where we started) (I'll assume that after 20 or so minutes of staring at the back of your eyelids, you've peeked and our lives can continue unabated))).
Stop imagining. Imagination never got anyone anything (still holding out for my pet Unicorn Dixie). Allright, focus Mikey, gameface. No more paranthesis (I promise). (Damnit! That was the last one.)

So Jenny and I were presented with a problem. We were hemoraging money by the second. Europe was sucking us dry like a breastfeeding shop-vac. We needed to escape from the clutches of the oppressive Euro and adopt a currency that would allow us to flourish. Our solution? LET'S GO TO ENGLAND! For those of you not familiar with the expense of England, it is legendary amongst travellers as one of the priciest destinations in the world. Especially for Americans. We thought 1.6 Euro to the dollar had a noose around our neck. 2.2 pound had us fully drawn and quartered. A beer costs 12 bucks. One ticket to the movies $32. Simply, picking London as your destination when you're broke is like having first pick in (insert sport) and picking the white guy or trying to cure an STD by sleeping with (insert trampy celebutaunt).

Nevertheless, we packed up our stuff and headed to the airport. We then hopped on our flight from Genoa to London. While i bitch and bitch about the costs everything in Europe, one exception is airfare. Our two hour flight across the continent cost, before taxes, exactly zero Euro (which when applied to the ever plummeting american dollar, comes out to just about zero dollars.) There is such rampant competition between budget airlines that their prices have plummeted (much in the same manner that many of their airplanes have. What do you expect from a free international flight?) You pretty much get what you pay for. Our cramped, rocky, hectic flight landed with a skid and a sigh of relief from all passengers (including flight attendents. Daredevils.) Unfortunately, we landed not in London's primary airport Heathrow, nor secondary Gatwick, but London's #3 airport at Stanstead. Our bus ride into the city took longer and cost more than our actual flight. We departed our bus at Liverpool station with only a smattering of hastily scribbled directions on the back of my hand, expecting our first moments in London to be as hectic and mind frapeeing as all the rest of our destinations. We were in serious focus mode. We slapped on gamefaces so stern, they'd smoke all of Mount Rushmore in a staring contest. Each of us was primed in our own style of defensive expertise: Jenny ready to strike forth with a tornado of fists and teeth and fingernails, I prepared at a moments notice to drop into the fetal position and soil myself. As we made our way down the metro steps (back to back SWAT style of course), I slowly came to understand a shocking truth. The walls were plastered with symbols that were somehow familiar to me. These shapes make a pattern that a tiny corner of my brain remembers from somewhere, deep down, lost to the years. "Alack" I cried "Tis the King's English!" "Thine caligaphy pon yonder parapet doth embue in me a great understanding. Now, come strumpet. Fetch me my steed. I have traveled for a fortnight and grown a king's for the frosty brew. Perhaps later i might take a gander beneath thy frock!" Actually, it was probably more like "Damn, this is gonna be easy." So we settled in for a luxurious ride on London's subway, the world's best. (although for 13 dollars for a day pass it better be, that's dinner and a happy ending in Thailand.) The whole tube ride Jenny and I sat silently, enjoying a pasttime you'd never know you loved until it's lost: eavesdropping. We settled into our hostel and didn't mind the exorbadent prices because it was truly the coolest place we had stayed so far. It's called the Clink Hostel and it's built into an old courthouse. Many of the old courtrooms still stand. You can sit in a judges chair while checking your email and pretend your Judge Ito and let your dorm buddy murderer go free. Or reenact your favorate Matlock episode by falling asleep at the prosecutors desk in the TV room. They had even turned a couple of the old cells, bars and all, into doubles. It's kinda like the Madonna Inn except here a romantic evening involves toilet wine and forcibly branding a swastika onto your roommates ass with a blowdryer and a paperclip.'

We arrived in London with the understanding that we were coming to the very end of our travels and simply didn't have the cash to do the city properly. We intended to tour the city in our own and see whatever sights we could for free or close to it. Much to our pleasent surprise, London happened to be quite accomodating on this front. The savvy traveler can save themselves huge amounts of money by doing just a few little things here and there. Eating out for instance, is out of the question, but London's infrastructure of American style supermarkets and our hostel's killer kitchen facilities allowed us to eat very well every night by self catering. We also had the luck of getting to know the folks at London Non-Stop tours. They are one of countless tour companies that give walking tours of he cities many sites. The one thing that seperates this company from all the rest is that the tour FREE. That's right, a three hour tour of downtown London led by a shockingly well informed guide completely on the house. We got to travel around Westminster to the houses of parliment, big ben, westminster abbey, piccadilly circus and all those other things you've seen a million times in photographs and movies. Our guide was a young punker guy so he was full of stories about break ins, murders, and all around illegal hooliginery that most guides wouldn't tell you about. (including a story about a man breaking into the queen's bedroom, who upon being awakened by the intruder, joined him with a spot of tea before calling the guards. so proper.)

Our association with Non Stop also got us discounted tickets to their nighttime Jack the Ripper tour. Yet another young, cool, but surprisiingly scholarly guide took us around the dark streets of old London, showing us the locals and telling the ever-mystifying tale of the murders he committed. The experience was really quite haunting. A combination of wandering through the poorly lit dodgey areas of town and the dramatically delivered details of the crimes was pretty unsettling. Jack would slice the woman's throat, cut open her stomach, throw her intestines over her right shoulder and then remove her uterus before taking a few other souveneirs with him. The fact that the crime is reamins unsolved to this day, adds to the legend. If anyone knows Jenny and her obsession with serial killers, you'll understand how fired up she got. FRANCIS TUMPLETON"S coming to get you (that's who I think did it, though I haven't ruled out O.J., Dr. Claw or Skeletor either.)

So we had dedicated ourselves to frugalty in every way possible. We did discover quite quickly that cheap equals boring. We decided that we could no longer suffer through any more hours of television (though our cupeth did runeth over with an entire satelite lineup of channels in English, even if they were full of the Girls Aloud. Never heard of em? be greatful.) We chose to jump on a suggestion put forth by our hostel wall. We booked a day tour that would wisk us away to the legendary archeological pop quiz that is Stonehendge. Our guide gave us very specific directions for the pick. We arrived at point A well before time A and the bastards never showed up. Fucking A. Crushed, we allotted ourselves to yet another day of video countdowns when we saw a bus around the corner. Now we knew immediately from the markings of the bus that it wasn't our tour, but we decided to enquire just to see if we could hop along their tour wherever it happened to head. At least we could make something of our day. This is when we met Adrian and Jon. The former a Kiwi and the latter an Aussie, they were representatives of a church group for non-locals who had transplanted to London. (btw their house of worship: a downtown theater that is the current musical We Will Rock You, complete with a ten foot golden idol of Freddie Mercury.) We casually asked these gents where they were going at the very off chance it was in fact our bus. Turned out it was not our bus "but we have two extra seats. Hop on." Why not. So we climbed aboard a packed bus filled with Austrailians and New Zealanders who all just assumed we were church members who attended a different mass. We then had a breif chat with Adrian to find that the whole trip would be completely free, including admission to Stonehendge and the Baths at Bath. Jenny looked at me with a smile that showed a cocktail of shock, releif, apprehension and disbelief. She said "the only thing missing is cookies and this would be the best day ever" Sure enough down the hall comes a batch of freshly baked sprinkle cookies awaiting our consumption. As the trip went on, news of the two American stowaways permeated the bus and was met with a unanimous cry of respect for having the bollocks to just walk into a group of strangers and pretend to give a crap about Jesus. We travelled with this group, dubbed Magical Tours, to the anchient relics of Stonehendge, around the Roman Pools at Bath, to a pair of English Pubs for lunch and dinner and even for a quaint afternoon tea at Sally Lun Buns. We managed to turn what looked like our worst day in all of Europe into perhaps our best, all due to the generosity of a couple random Austrailasians. All in all it was an incredbile day and spectacular way to cap off our time in London.

The next day we hopped on the tube and headed out to Heathrow airport. It has been dubbed the worst airport in the world by a number of publications, a label that is completely undeserved. Jenny and I hopped on our jet with great anticipation, knowing that our travels were heading towards their denoumax. We had one last stop before home. Though we knew that it would be one of the strangest and most otherwordly places either of us have ever seen. Next stop Iceland.

(Disclaimer: Yes I am aware that it has been 3 months since I have been in England and that it is somewhat filanderous to represent these events in the recent past tense as opposed to the not so recent past tense. Anyone who cares about these blogs undoubtebly knows that we have been home in So Cal for quite some time. However, i feel that it is in the best interest of the characters to not disclose their futures, as at this point we didn't know what was going to happen. So please keep your mouth shut and dont tell them (us) about the things that they (we) did. I don't want to ruin our (our) surprise.)

P.S. I apologize for the massive length of time between entries, i have been far too busy trying to save cash so that i may create new, fresh experiences to blog about. The time will come soon. Next trip commences Sept 7th. Try to find a way to occupy your lives until then.

---

---