The past days have been a blur of travel, a lack of sleep and fun adventures.
I think I new things were going to be an adventure at the beginning of Thursday night when I forgot to bring my American ID to the Pub Tour. I had to sprint back to my flat in order to go. At our school the only valid ID for age is our school ID, but outside school we need a driver's license or passport. Once we arrived at our venue it began to rain. But rain in Brighton clearly doesn't stop the party. It was a great, but late night.
Friday we had to be at our coach for London at 8:15. I'm not sure who thought that would be a good idea for a walking tour in London to start so early after a planned Pub Tour by the school. Needless to say I woke up with barely enough time to shower and get the things I needed to stay the night in London.
As we neared London the rain just became heavier but that didn't stop the huge crowds that were in front of Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. I had no idea how tourist-y London would be, but coming from a tourist I guess that makes sense. That day our tour group basically walked all of London on foot and had a boat tour. And what we didn't see as a group, my friends and I explored the next day. I think it would take weeks to see all London has to offer, but that would also take a large amount of money a student like me could not afford. However, there are so many museums that are free.
After our tour ended we explored the streets after Oxford street. Oxford street is full of designer shops and what is outside of it is "reasonably priced". I basically just walked away with some much needed postcards. 15 for only one pound was too great of a price to pass up. We later found fish and chips, finally! They weren't as cheap as expected, but I guess at that point in the day we all just wanted a place to sit down for dinner. I'm glad we went to a nicer place since it made my first fish and chips experience decent. P.S. There are plenty of places to order the fish and chips in the states, and I continuously opt out.
After dinner we traveled to find out hostel. At first we seemed pretty weary considering it's ridiculously reasonable price (20 pounds for the night). It didn't help that the hostel was over a pub. But, many hostels in London are and we were traveling as five people which gave us strength in numbers. Fears aside, the hostel was great for what we expected, clean and comfy beds and blankets, a good number of bathrooms and with the security in place we felt safe. Overall, it was a great intro into our future of weekends staying in hostels while we travel.
The night started out... interesting. Here, it is super common for 30-50 years olds to go out, and I mean "go out". In my personal opinion it is a much different norm than in the states. But after asking around, multiple times, we found out the place to be was SoHo.
Once we arrived our night started looking much better. In England, basically every place closes and 6pm, even what would be similar to our target. But, in SoHo, the nightlife was plentiful. On the main street there are people whose jobs are to get "certain" people into the venue. It was great for us, considering we never had to pay, and never had to wait in a line. Maybe it was great for the venues?, cause we would have never paid an entrance fee anywhere due to our budget here. We slept like babies after having 3-6 hours the night before.
So today....
We started off with an breakfast at out hostel. England has a bad misunderstood reputation for their food, it isn't that it's bad it's just different. You could survive here without ever having english food, but that doesn't mean there won't be differences with anything else. I've only seen one Mexican food place, which is unfortunate for me. Just about everything is somewhat different here, the meat, bread and cheese. Nothing is processed and everything is pretty freshly made since not much has preservatives.
We started off at covent garden with many booths to buy from and street performers to watch. It was a great start to our day but we left empty handed, except for the new pictures in our cameras.
On our way to China town we ran into Pride. They were performing some songs from RENT, but the people in my group weren't too familiar with the musical. Maybe sometime I can drag my middle sister back to London with me to go in the future.
China town made us feel at home since it was extremely similar to the ones in LA and San Francisco. But for the most part we just passed through and then went to the Burroughs Market. It was pretty amazing. I think there was just about every kind of cheese, meat (salted, fresh or sausage), and fruit. I walked away with a cheese sandwich, a piece of baklava, and a scoop of goat's milk ice cream. The cheese was fresh and there were onions and a few veggies inside. I also didn't know that the ice cream was made from goats milk until after, but I couldn't pass up ice cream with actual honeycomb inside. It was pretty great.
After that we started on our journey from London back to Brighton. It was a pretty torn feeling since being in London was exhausting and fast paced. But there were so many great adventures. I love Brighton, but it also means back to the studying. There will be a lot of it this week for our upcoming test on Friday.
Until tomorrow...
