London Part Two
- Jul 3, 2017
- 5 min read
Alas, this time, a pun cannot be made.
The next time I found myself in London, it was after riding through the night on the coach from Capernwray. Many a final goodbye had been said, but the reality of post-Cape sadness hadn’t fully kicked in yet (it kicks in about 3 days after you get back home and then hits you in waves for what I presume –based on how things are going so far- will be forever). But in the moment, Josie, Harrison, and I were distracted by the prospect of romping around Europe for 3 weeks.
We checked into our hostel at about 6am, and napped hard until 9 or 10. Then, as Harrison continued to nap, Josie and I went out to get breakfast. There was a little bakery around the corner which sold all manner of delicious treats on the cheap (such places are the holy grail for traveling peasants such as us) so we stocked up and then went to sit on a bench in Hyde Park and eat it. We then headed back to the hostel to discover that Harrison had discovered that on some point during the coach journey he’d split his pants, and then we had to go spend like 6 hours in Primark looking for new ones (the man knows what he wants from a pant and only a certain kind will do apparently.) Meanwhile, I was plagued by heavy fatigue and falling asleep into the nearest clothes rack. Once the pant-to-beat-all-pants was found and purchased, we headed to Baker Street and messed around in the gift shop of the Sherlock Holmes museum. (Again, we are peasants, so paying to go into the museum was not on the agenda.) We then went a little further afield to the Sherlock Holmes pub. Josie had been when she visited London before school started, and she wanted to take me so that I could taste their life-changing mac and cheese. I did taste said mac and cheese, and it was life-changing. I also befriended some red hat ladies and got a picture with them. The one thing that was a trifle upsetting was that there was a glass-encased life-size diorama of Sherlock’s living room, complete with creepy wax figurine of Mr. Holmes himself, which stared at me from across the way the entire time I was eating. Had he been of the RDJ or Bendysnitch Crumpyboots persuasion, this would have been fine, delightful even, but this one was a little too Jeremy-Brett-gone-wrong for his inanimate gaze to be anything but disconcerting.
After dinner (sorry, tea) we went to Notting Hill. This was my idea, because I’m the one who’s seen the movie, so naturally it turned into a wild goose chase, because –in true Emily fashion- I tend to decide I want to go places and then realize that I actually have no idea how to go about getting there. We did technically make it to a Notting Hill neighbourhood, but it was a very outskirtish sort of area with not much to look at, so we didn’t linger long. We spent the rest of the evening roaming the V&A, and then, after some late night burgers, we headed back to the hostel.
I guess now would be a good time to explain that these hostel rooms we stayed in were 6-person mixed dorms because they are cheaper. GASP! What were you thinking? How unsafe! Yes, yes, I know. And in another life, I would have flat-out refused such an arrangement on principle. But then I went to Switzerland, where, to quote Esther, “you breathe in the wrong direction, and boom, you’re bankrupt” and something about coming back roughly $1,000 lighter than I been before made me rethink my priorities. And, as it turned out, it was really not that big of a deal. I mean, I wouldn’t stay in one if I were completely by myself, but I never felt weirded out or unsafe, despite the fact that I’m not a particularly trusting person. We also had Harrison with us, so that helped. But, I will say that I do think it is ridiculous that staying in an all-girls dorm is more expensive than staying in a mixed dorm (and yes, I understand that less girls stay in hostels so they are harder to fill up) because if a girl feels unsafe staying in a mixed dorm, SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY MORE TO FEEL SAFE. Thank you. Feminist rant over. Anyway, with that being said, and with the concept that I personally was totally chill with the mixed dorm, let us examine an extract which I jotted down whilst lying in bed in the hostel late at night. Nothing like Emily’s observance live in living colour.
“Currently in a hostel dorm and there are two random dudes sleeping in the same room as us. One is having a phone conversation in a foreign language. At first I thought he was talking in his sleep, but turns out he’s just being really rude.
Update: he just removed all his clothing except his underwear, and THEN entered the privacy of the bathroom, so congratulations friend, I now know you on a deeper level than any of my male friends I’ve known for years.”
The following day found us sitting in Kensington Gardens, drinking tea. I had one earphone in (I had one earphone in most of the trip, because tourism is empty and meaningless without background music) the song of the moment being “Us” by Regina Spektor. We passed a lovely morning in the gardens, the highlights of which included seeing many cute doggos and also a tree that looked like a turd. We then returned to the hostel to start getting ourselves ready to catch the train Paris. (I love that sentences like that are actual things that happened in my life). Anyway, I was leaning over my suitcase, when a fellow roommate came in and apologized for coughing a lot the night before (At least he wasn’t talking on the phone). I looked up to respond, only to discover that the fellow speaking was an unkempt, wild looking individual with lots of long brown hair that stuck out in all directions, and was wearing nothing but his jeans. Was this a Neanderthal? Had I been transported back to pre-historic times? Was his name Og? I bet his name was Og. But never mind, at least Og was nice.
We also met a dude in the common area downstairs who was interested in what we did at Bible school, and said of Christianity, “some people can go to extremes with that shit.” He’s not wrong, that whole Jesus-dying-on-the-cross-for-our-sins thing was pretty extreme. Anyway, he and Harrison ended up having a really good conversation. Then we went down to the basement to get our luggage and saw a moustachioed man in nothing but a towel, which, honestly, sums up the entire hostel experience pretty well. And then, it was onward and upward, toward our next stop: Paris.
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