The trip from Stansted Airport to London was our first introduction to subways in Europe, and it took a little getting used to the set-up of the infamous London Metro. By the time we reached the tube stop closest to out hostel, it was coming on to 19:00. We emerged from the empty station into darkness, and as we got our bearings on our surroundings, it quickly became apparent that we were in the ghetto. Run down houses lined the streets and graffiti decorated the walls of the buildings and abandoned rail cars around us. As we walked down the streets, passing a few shady characters, fireworks exploded in the above and around us, giving the search for the hostel an added sense of urgency.
We walked around for about half an hour, getting lost down dead-ends and on streets I would have rather not travelled. By the end of it, Meghan was none too pleased with being out in a random ghetto of London in the middle of the night. We finally found the 'Bridge Park Hotel', which, as it turned out, was only slightly better than being stuck on an unknown street in a foreign country. Joseph, the Middle Eastern clerk took our info and led us upstairs and through a maze of hallways, passing a few characters that sported the same greasy mullets and strange odours of the randoms on the street. When we arrived at our room, it had none of the amenities that we had been promised, and the window over-looked a garage and an alley, with fireworks popping like gunfire in the background. All she could do was laugh, but by this point Meghan was about ready to ditch the whole European trip thing, and check-in to the nearest hotel for the month. Because we had booked two nights at the Bridge Park Hotel, we left the room (making sure to lock it) and went to search the internet to see if we could or should switch hostels for the next night. As we were sitting there a man off the street ran into the lobby and asked Joseph to call the police. A man was being beaten by some teens outside. We decided against staying a second night.
Like a Hebrew fleeing Egypt or a soldier on the last chopper out of Saigon, we fled the London ghetto the next morning, getting lost a few more times before finding the tube station. Our new home for the night would be Piccadilly Backpackers, which was in downtown London; a few minutes walk from Trafalgar Square. It was an incredible sunny autumn Sunday that greeted us as we emerged from the Piccadilly Circus metro station.
The old stately buildings of downtown London were a welcome change from the crumbling outskirts. As would become common practice on this trip, we walked around and looked at stuff all day, starting with Trafalgar Square, and down the mall to Buckingham Palace and the adjacent park, before heading towards the Thames and Westminster Abby, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. After some fish and chips at a local pub, we toured the National Art Gallery. One pattern that began to emerge here was our tendency to only skim the surface of each country by checking out the biggest tourist traps in each country and skimming the surface of culture (leading me to dub the trip as 'Half-Assed and Clueless') but hey, we only have a month. Give us a break. Satisfied that we had seen enough of the city, Meghan gave the now oft-repeated command "Next country!" and so, the next morning, we set off for France.
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