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Published: April 9th 2009
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Well here's how my trip to London with Lisa went down...it was quite an adventure:
Monday - Arrived at the airport around 10:30 at night, went through customs and all that good stuff, then attempted to find our way around to our couchsurfers who lived about an hour away. So we went on a search for the train station to take us into town...by the time we got there they told us the next train to leave would be the last one to go where we needed to be. We asked what time that train would be leaving and he told us 11:15...the time was 11:11....so we RAN.... ALOT. Then we hopped on the underground tube from there, going the directions the internet has told us to take...Around midnight it turned out we didn't know what we were doing, and the workers there felt bad so they gave us a free ride in the underground back to the correct station! So we backtracked and headed a few stations over in the other direction, talked to some more workers at the underground who also felt bad and were extremely helpful...turned out the place was around a 15 minute walk from
the station we were at, so off we went!! Once we got up to the road they lived on, we checked out the street signs and found out we were at house number 2...they lived at house number 117....so we did some more running! It was a little frightening because at this point it was past one in the morning and we figured our couchsurfing people were probably in bed already...but long and behold, we got to the door and there lights were on, it was the happiest feeling EVER....definitely an awesome adrenaline rush and a good feeling of accomplishment knowing that we had made it to this random house in an area we had never been to before!
Saturday - Went to Central London with one of our couchsurfing hosts, Hyall, and his friend Reza. We walked a TON but it was amazing! We basically went to see all the touristy stuff like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, etc…oh and we also bought some delicious expensive ice cream. But it was worth it, haha. We took a ton of pictures, and then the guys helped us find our way through the underground to
get to our next couchsurfing place. We settled in a little and then went out for dinner at some local pub just down the street. They also took us to some Tiki bar thing afterwards, but we headed back because we got a little bored. We also decided to we liked our couchsurfers from the day before much better because as nice as our second person was, he got really drunk and annoying by the end of the night and Lisa and I got pretty sick of it. Especially because he felt the need to play the piano at 5 in the morning when we were trying to sleep, and then kept asking us every few minutes if we needed anything, well clearly we didn’t because we were in bed with the lights off….the last time he came in at like 5:30 he ended up falling against the radiator on the wall and now he thinks he injured his ribs! Despite his level of intoxication, he did do a very good job on the piano though...haha
Sunday - Took the underground tube to Picadilly Circus, where we checked into our hostel. For 15 pounds it wasn’t bad! We
were in a really good central location, and the place wasn’t too shabby either. We ended up getting ahold of Hyall who we had stayed with the first night, and he took us around the south side of London, and we also took some pictures by Abbey Road. By the end of the night we were exhausted, so we went to Chinatown to try out some British Chinese food and then called it good.
Monday - Went shopping down Oxford Street, then met up with our couchsurfing friends while they were on their lunch break, when back to the hostel where we hung out with a friend from Australia who had been staying a few doors down…then went back out to hang out with the people we met the first night again. We ended up staying at yet another pub for quite awhile and proved ourselves to be stereotypical Americans by eating wayyyyy too much food in front of everyone, haha. Not to mention the fact that we ran to the store down the street while waiting for our food to come so we could eat chocolate in the meantime. Afterwards we all went to a place called
Funland which was indeed quite fun….Lisa and I attempted some DDR and then our British friends showed us up by doing way better than us. After we got back we decided not to go to bed since our shuttle bus to the airport was leaving at 3:15 in the morning, but we ended up slightly napping in the common room anyways.
Tuesday - We got to the airport about 3 hours early, so took another hardcore nap while waiting at the gate for our plane to start boarding. Then we slept pretty much the entire plane ride back to Madrid. Once we got there, we went to get something to eat to wake ourselves up and ended up meeting some pretty cool people from Ireland who we spend the day with before heading to our bus to Malaga. We finally got back to Malaga around midnight (long day!) and crashed until very late the next morning!
Coming back to England also made me realize how much I love it there...not that I don't love Spain or anything, but here its so easy to make friends quickly and everyone is so open and helpful. I will definitely
have to go back again someday, and for more than just a few weeks.
It has been REALLY good to catch up on sleep though! We crammed a lot into the 4 days we had there, but it was definitely well worth it! We were so lucky to meet some nice people, and honestly didn't any unpleasant run-ins with anyone! Everyone was so welcoming and more than willing to help us out with anything we needed...including the guy who let us get free rides on the underground tube when we were lost and confused...haha
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