London
London,
England,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sunday ended up being a beautiful day. It was one of those days where it should be a crime to keep your windows up. I had a pretty bad headache for most of the drive, but the beautiful weather definitely helped me feel better. On our drive to the ferry, we only had one minor detour. We realized that Sheba's mileage doesn’t always match up with Google’s, and we had passed our exit. First we tried to take a different route on a smaller road; however, that didn’t work out so well. We ended up driving through a town that was nothing but construction and dirt roads. Seriously. We saw another driver or two, a couple signs that didn’t help us, and a person or two walking along the road. It was like we were off roading through a creepy, Belgian ghost town. We decided it would be best to get back on the interstate after a couple miles when the construction still had no end in sight.
We ended up finding another route through France that took us straight to the port we needed in Calais. Once we got to the port, getting on the ferry with our car was an incredibly smooth, clear process. We pulled our car in under the ship and then sat on the upper deck for the ride across the English Channel to Dover, England.
Our drive to London was relatively smooth as well. We didn’t get lost, but by the time we got there both Justin and I really had to go to the bathroom. We rushed through getting checked in by the rude hotel workers because we just wanted to get upstairs and go to the bathroom. The hotel looked a little shotty, but we thought the rooms couldn’t be that bad. Oh, buddy, were we wrong.
We got upstairs to our room through a maze of dirty, stuffy hallways. We opened the door to a familiar smell of an old, musty attic. When we walked in, I seriously had to hold back tears. After traveling for over 9 hours, we got a tiny room with a bed and comforter that was from the 50s; dirty, badly stained carpet; and super dusty dishes and desk. We also had a 'partial kitchen’ included in our room but the stove top didn’t work and the fridge was super moldy and smelled awful. I turned down the sheets and thought I saw a bug, but ‘Op, no dear, it’s just a scab,’ I happily reported to Justin.
We immediately got online to see if we could go to Liverpool early. We had already paid for three nights (50 lbs~ $80 per night) but we didn’t care. Two nights would be more than enough in this room. After we booked another night in Liverpool, we walked through the area to find a restaurant. We soon found out our hotel was placed right in the middle of the ghetto. Luckily, we did find a nice restaurant and had a very good supper and waitress that helped lift our spirits. When we got back to the hotel, we made fun of it ruthlessly. Justin would pretend to piss in the corner (because would it really matter?) and I renamed it CS for the Crap Shack. The rest of the night we relaxed in our awesome new room, and I slept nervously in my sleep sheet. I was terrified of bed bugs, and the room was too hot so Justin wouldn’t join me in our one barricade against them.
Fortunately, the next morning we didn’t wake up with any bites. I tried to look at the good side of our room. We did have a tree outside our window that helped cover up a caved in building behind it. We didn’t see any cockroaches, mice, or rats; just a couple other big miscellaneous bugs. We didn’t have a/c and only a tiny window so every night was very cleansing by working up a good sweat. We did have a water heater to make tea that worked just fine after I washed the dust off. We were conserving water by using their shower. After taking my first shower there, I came out and told Justin I just had a lovely, spring sprinkle to shower in. Justin never did warm up to our room though (he actually wanted to light it on fire).
Monday had a bit of a difficult start. We were planning on doing two tours of London that day, one at 11 and one at 3 of two different parts of the city. We left an hour and half early because it takes half hour to get into the city, and we still needed to exchange some dollars for pounds. We stopped into the first bank we found. After waiting in line for 20 minutes, we found out that the banks in England do not exchange currency; post offices do. The teller pointed us in the direction of the closest post office, and so we went. After waiting there for 15 minutes, we found out that this particular post office did not accept anything over $50 dollar bills, and we needed to go to the main post office down the street. I wondered why they would have this rule in place because with the current exchange rate, it wouldn’t really be worth it for anyone to exchange money below $100 unless they were looking to just get some loose change to skip in the river.
We walked to the main post office and after another short wait, we were able to exchange our dollars. On our way to the bus, I saw they had a lot of Chinese herb shops and was pretty excited to try some new herbs. After stocking up, we took the bus into the city.
By this time, the tour was long gone, but they repeated the tour at 4. Since this is the one free tour in all of London, we were still very keen on making this tour. In the mean time we decided to go to London Tower Bridge. Our first attempt getting there was unfruitful, but we were both enjoying ourselves because we got the front seats on the top deck of our double decker bus. When we found the right bus, we again got our great seats in the front, top of the bus. We went through the central city of London and ended up getting our own tour. I pulled out my guidebook, and it told us what each monument and building was that we passed by on our bus ride. We got to the Tower Bridge and walked around the Tower for a while and along the river. We had a nice walk and rode the bus back to Victoria station. By this time we had already missed the second tour so we walked to see Westminster Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and Green Park. Then Justin and I were getting hungry and ate out at a great Italian restaurant by the train station.
When it came time to pay for our meal, we realized we had another problem. Justin had been using one of my money belts that hung around his neck, and all he had now was a broken string without the pouch. We don’t know if the string just broke because Justin had been putting on and taking off his poncho several times that day (as it rained on and off all day) or if someone else did something when we were in a crowded area. All we know is we are down 200 pounds, a credit card, and a license. Justin and I felt slightly indifferent about London because we’re not big city people, but after all of this, we just wanted to leave. I think that I would have liked London given another chance because they do have a lot of organic, all natural, herbal stores and restaurants and an international cheese store. However, with London being the most expensive city for tourists and our ‘series of unfortunate events.’ We’re ready to go.
Last night we watched a great English show that combined history, food, and comedy all in one. It’s a show were this man and woman dress up and eat like people did in different eras. Last night was the French Revolution, which helped us put our troubles into perspective.
This morning Justin tried canceling his credit card again. He was finally able to and found there were no charges on it. Things are looking up, we have learned valuable lessons from London, and we can’t wait to go to Liverpool today.
