London: Part Two

Day 3: Monday March 1st, 10pm

I mean, I guess it’s day 3 of our trip. It’s rather confusing at this point. I know today is our second day in London, but it feels like our first day. I mean, today was the first day we were accustomed to the hours, so I wasn’t half asleep the whole time.

So yesterday, day 2, was loads of fun. Jeff and I got into Dublin at around 5:30am, at which point Jeff immediately got a Guinness, and then boarded a plane to London at around 6:30. I had slept horribly during the trans-Atlantic flight, tossing and turning after dinner and the movie (Where the Wild Things Are, which was awesome!) and really felt awful when we landed in Dublin. I slept through the flight to London and just felt worse once we landed. Honestly, it’s like pulling an all-nighter. At the end of the night, when it’s just about daytime, you get this temptation to sleep for the next 30 minutes or an hour, just to get some sleep because dear god you are so tired now. But that’s really the worst thing to do. Either you sleep through whatever you’ve wanted to pull an all-nighter for, or you wake in time and are so horribly tired that you might as well be asleep. This was the same thing. I slept for about an hour, after practically no sleep at all, and when we landed I was like the walking dead. I wanted a cup of coffee, a dime bag of speed, a shot of heroin, anything! I was a wreck.

Nevertheless, on I trudged after Jeff, who was, as ever, awake and excited to be here. He is such an inspiration to go on when I’m exhausted. I hate to let him down, to let him see me tired or otherwise not at my A game, so I push myself onwards. We caught the Gatwick Express in from Gatwick to Victoria’s Cross, and then up to King’s Cross/ St. Pancras Station. Yes, this is the same King’s Cross of Harry Potter’s 9¾ but I have yet to find the 9¾ sign. I am looking, vaguely.

So when we got in it was rainy and gross and cold and dear god what am I doing here? I was hungry and tired and miserable and just wanted to get to the hotel and have a shower and go to sleep. But where is the hotel? We knew it was called MacDonald’s (har har big mac) and it was on Argyle something. So around and around we went on Argyle St. So many hotels, and none of them MacAnything, let alone MacDonald’s. After what felt like a millennia (honestly, about 10 minutes) we found MacDonald’s on Argyle Square and went in. Mind, it was about 10am at this point and we weren’t supposed to check in until 2pm, so we were a little hazy on whether or not we could actually go in at all or not. So we could go in to the hotel itself, but not to our bedroom. As a compromise, the lovely man behind the counter said that we could easily leave our bags behind the counter and then go out for about an hour while our room was gotten ready. A fine compromise indeed, except that going out for about an hour meant wandering in the rain and the misery, but out we went. It helped get us out when we realized that we needed a new SIM card for one of our phones’, in order to actually be able to text or call anyone. This inspired a search of King’s Cross/St. Pancras’ station, in which we were told that we could find a kiosk with free SIM cards and cheap top-ups. I feel like I have to keep reminding you how tired I was at this point. I’d been up since about 7am the previous day with nothing but fitful napping and being squished on an airplane. I felt awful. And more than that, I hadn’t really had a chance to sit down and rest. Sure, the train gave me some time to sit down, but I was still exhausted to my core. And keeping that in mind, I will tell you that we walked around King’s Cross station for just under an hour, going back and forth and up and down and generally in more and more frustrating circles, finally finding the kiosk and procuring a SIM card. Which didn’t work. Jeff and I hadn’t really thought about it, but in order to use the SIM card, which is from a company who’s name escapes me, we would have to unlock our phones. Bugger. And on a Sunday, that’s totally impossible. So back to our hotel we headed in order to wait for our room, wait for a shower, and wait for our friend Peter.

Oh yes, Peter! Peter is a very dear friend of ours who lives in London, who we met through The Internet, and who was kind enough to offer to show us around London and even take us to a rugby match on Sunday. And actually, that’s the main reason we needed a phone. We hadn’t been in touch with Peter since we’d gotten on the plane to the UK and we had no idea if he was going to meet us at the airport or meet us at the hotel or if we were supposed to meet him at the rugby game or what. So honestly we needed to call him. But without a phone, we had no way to.

Back at the hotel, having procured a SIM card we couldn’t use, we asked the man at the front desk if we could use his phone to telephone our friend. He agreed, and so we phoned Peter. And got his voicemail. Lovely! At this point we started making plans of our own for a nice dinner and a walk around, as we weren’t sure we’d be able to meet up with Peter at all. At one point Jeff checked his Google voicemail and saw he’d received a VM from Peter, saying that he’d dropped his phone in the sink and he was unreachable once he left his computer. Wonderful. Our room finally being ready at this point (roughly noon) we retired to downstairs to relax at least for a bit, before Peter arrived.

We got to relax for all of five minutes, rearranging our bags in our cabin-like room (Mama, I felt like I was on a ship the entire time) when we hear a knock on the door. “Room service!” Which is odd, because the MacDonald hotel is the least likely I’ve ever been in to have room service available. But we open the door and lo! And behold! It’s Peter! What a surprise!

So having acquired Peter, we trudged out again into the rain, to get lunch and to get over to the rugby stadium. We actually had a few hours before the rugby match, so we went around some of the more touristy places to see how many tourists stand about in the rain looking ridiculous. Besides ourselves, of course. I feel so bad, though. I was in an awful mood by this point. And w still had yet to meet Peter’s girlfriend! After lunch I felt better, sure, but my feet were still utterly achy and I just wanted to sleep.

We met up with Alex at the Euston station at around 3ish (the game being at 4) and bought tickets out to God only knows where, England. Peter described it as “dingy, horrible, uninteresting, small town England” and yes, it was that, but it was also quite interesting, from an American’s perspective. And it was what I was used to from living in Edinburgh. Small, squat, concrete buildings standing out sharply against a small, squat, concrete colored sky. Lots of puddles and a very long walk later (I swear Peter was just pulling our legs for the most of it), we got to the stadium. In keeping with the theme, the stadium was small, squat, concrete, and covered in a tarp. Turns out that the Seracens (sp, Pete?) who we were going to watch play, don’t have so many fans and so they don’t have a ton of money for a really nice stadium, so they just kind of patch up their old stadium.

So the game! Lots of fun, especially during the second half. During the first half the Serries did quite well, getting ahead of Bath, the opposing team, using a variety of smart kicks and good teamwork. In the second half, however, there were neverending scrums and absolute cheating from the Ref! It was nuts! I mean, the scrum went over the side on the Serrie end but not into the goal and he still called it a goal! Can you believe it? What an arse. So there was a lot of shouting and beer drinking and IrnBru swigging and really a ton of fun.

Afterwards, we made our way back to Euston station, to a pub that Peter had heard has the best home made pies in all of London. Turns out it was a huge Man.U football pub, loud, rough, and rowdy, and we were the only rubgy hooligans in the whole joint! Well, that was fine by us so we grabbed some beers, wedged ourselves into a table, and had a hell of a time teasing the football hooligans, laughing it up, and eating what basically amounted to a puff pastry on soup (so much for pie!). Did I mention that I absolutely adore Alex, Peter’s girlfriend? Well, I do. Two pints in she and I were like best chums, gossiping about our boys and how Yah girl’s do their hair and the enormous effort it takes to do your eyebrows properly and everything. She’s a doll.

After the pints and the football hooligans and the pies, it was time to say goodnight. Jeff and I were going to meet up with Peter again tomorrow (which is now yesterday, yipes! So far behind!) for some more sight seeing, but we probably wouldn’t be seeing Alex again. So after a huge hug, we said goodnight, and Jeff and I made our wobbly way back to our hotel and our narrow little cabin room. And there we slept like rocks.

Now it’s time for me and Jeff to get out and have our own little adventure, but I’ll update later tonight on both today and yesterday. Promise! Here’s a hint: It involves the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the London Eye, and me, asking what a train is.

Lots of love and wish you were here!