Advertisement
Published: December 24th 2007
Edit Blog Post
We had gotten up really early in Amsterdam to make it to our EasyJet flight to London on time. The clientele on the airplane were quite varied, some were still drunk from a night out partying. I was sitting right behind a guy that had "Made in England" tattooed on the back of his neck. It reminded me of one of those "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" commercials with the glum or worn out-looking people on the airplane back home.
We changed all of the remaining money from the several currencies we had into pounds and got used to the sticker shock of how little our cash was worth in the isles. In fact, our train from Gatwick to downtown London cost more than our flight from Amsterdam!
On getting to central London, we made it to a bar in Soho. We were going to be staying with my friends Chris and Sam who I had met three years earlier in Istanbul and had moved into a flat in north London with the rest of their bandmates (there band is pretty good, check them out
here ). Chris was a bartender, and we'd leave our stuff there. We
had had excellent timing on coming to London in that his bar was opening their flagship site that night, and we would be invited along with the other employees for food and drink in a private party at the new locale.
We left our bags in the manager's office, and did a little sight-seeing around Brick Lane (where Jack the Ripper had his killing spree) and the financial district before going back, washing and changing in the bar bathroom, and going with Chris to the swank flagship bar. That night ended up being a very fun time, mingling with the locals.
Dave and I spent much of the rest of our last days touring, and taking it easy. We saw all the usual London sights, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Parliament, Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus, the British Museum (that last one never stops fascinating me). We spent a lot of time Westminster Abbey, exploring every nook and cranny. There are so many stories all over that cathedral, and so much history flowing through it within those resting peacefully underfoot. It's surreal... Disraeli, Newton, Shelly, Henry VIII, Byron, Dickens, Queen Elizabeth are all interred or commemorated there.... and the
list goes on and on.
The wear and tear from all of the months of constant travelling was starting to take its toll on Dave and I. Combined with the dreary London weather, we were feeling a bit worn out. We went out one night to Camden Town, which is a very trendy and kind of underground bar district, and for our last night travelling, we saw the musical Cabaret.... at least a very racy, interesting interpretation of it...
We couldn't believe that it was the end of the trip, but it was.... I had fulfilled my big travel goals, in my around-the-world trip. It was an interesting feeling: sad and satsifying at the same time. I would soon be off to visit family in Argentina, making it 4 continents I had visited in 4 months, and then working on figuring out what I would be doing with my life in the foreseeable future...
For more pictures and another spin on these events, see Dave's blog:
Jolly old England, and the end of my trip ----------------------------------------------------
The events in this blog occurred in the period when TravelBlog was down in August 2007. Luckily, I kept a personal journal off which I am basing
some of the write-up's that follow this one in backwards chronological. It did take a while for me to get the time to write all of these blogs out (
Slovenia,
Prague,
Cesky Krumlov,
Munich,
Amsterdam), but it has been a great experience. Through bringing these stories to life, I've put myself back in the moment, re-living the times I spent, people I met, and things I saw and did in the amazing places I visited.
-AR; Dec. 24, 2007
----------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0434s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb