Alive and well

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I have officially not slept for 24 hours. The advice I was given by another traveller was to just stay up for the rest of my day...making my sleep tonight an UNREAL experience. The flight across was fairly enjoyable, having a seat near the middle bulkhead...leaving tonnes of leg room, though sleep still evaded me. My neighbor was a fellow teacher from Georgia who was on her way to spend a month travelling through England and France. We parted ways soon after we touched down. Heathrow wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, given what happened only 24 hours ago. I even got a shocking look from the georgia teacher when I told her I was venturing on the 'tube' to get to my hostel in Central London.

I boarded the tube (picadilly line) and everything was good for about a half hour...UNTIL we stopped about 2 km from my stop...and they made us get off...due to some fire that was happening in the underground tunnel ahead of us. Another backpacker and I decided to take a little stroll to the next underground station...turned out he had just left the US military, after doing 3 tours of duty in Iraq. I was kinda blown away and even though we only spent about a half hour chatting and laughing...that old feeling of backpacking came back. We were the best of friends, even if it was only for a half hour. I wished him luck and made my way to my hostel. My hostel, 'Palmers Lodge' is a mid ninteenth century mansion that they converted into a hostel...it's a pretty unreal place. Hopefully my luck is changing in terms of picking 'good' hostels. I'll end my first 'blog' here (ugh...can't believe I used that word). I have to make my way back down to Hyde Park, fit in some siteseeing, contact my friends in town (you know who you are) and get a good nites sleep...will be making my way to the Royal Henley Regatta tomorrow. I will add pictures as soon as I figure out how to actually DO it.

Yours in travelling,

Don

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Comments

[Rachel]

Regatta
see ya tomorrow how exciting lol xxx

[Elaine]

sounds exciting, have fun!

[JESSICA]

info on your hostel
My LA travel companions and I are quite certain your hostel is Haunted! This was right on the Palmer's Lodge webpage: When Samuel Palmer died in 1903 the house, known then as "Northcourt", was gifted to a hospital charity and in 1903 it became the permanent location for the Home for Incurable Children. By 1919 many diseases which would once have rendered their sufferers incurable could be treated and the hospital changed its name to Northcourt Hospital and Home for Sick Children. There were further changes of name: the hospital became known as the Hampstead Hospital for Children in 1928 and the Children's Hospital Hampstead in 1929. Heard any giggles late at night??? Sleep tight babe :D

[stabelmeg]

its me, abby!
hi mr. segberg, your trip sounds fun! you have to leave comments on my blog 2 ok later!