London Calling

A little music to get you in the mood: Across the Universe

So as the days ticked by before our big Spring Break trip people started to get really antsy here and you could feel the excitement in the air like electricity. It’s really hard to justify a spring break when you’ve been living in Italy for the past two months but let me tell you, it was amazing, and a breath of fresh air. So for the next few days I’ll be posting our adventure in a few segments, that way I can make them nice and detailed.

Let me just get a few things untangled here. When I say that going to English speaking countries is a breath of fresh air I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled American, but to be able to have conversations with strangers you meet on the street or in a pub is one of the things I really miss about home. I’m naturally a very sarcastic person and I love to joke around but it’s nearly impossible to do that when you’re constantly struggling with the language. I love learning new languages (hence French, Spanish and now Italian) and I love to learn about different cultures and food (hence all the Travel Channel and Food Network). I could sit in a pub and talk for hours about the cultural differences between the US, Spain, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Italy (and Canada! We met a ton of Canadians in Ireland and had some great conversations)… at least those that I have observed. I think it’s great how people can identify with each other even when they are from such different backgrounds.

Anyway back to Spring Break…we spent 3 days (4 nights) in London and 5 days in Dublin. It consisted of a ton of walking, beer and meat pies. Not bad eh?

*Thursday, March 3*

Classes over, bags packed, off to London town!!! So there we were, Katie, Spencer, James, Caitlin and I, in the lobby of the JFRC waiting for the 5 person cab we had called. We were all sooo excited we couldn’t stand it. Once the cab came we headed to the Fumincino airport at about 5:30 pm to catch our 8 o’clock flight to London (!!). We made it to the airport in plenty of time and everything went surprisingly smoothly. It took about 2 hours to get London Gatwick from Rome and so by the time we touched down it was already about 10:30. We took the EasyBus to Earl’s Court, which took about an hour and twenty minutes, and then took a cab to our Hostel which was only about a five minute drive. The cab ride was such a relief compared to Rome. Here we could actually talk to the driver and make sure he didn’t take advantage of us (as much as Rome at least, it seems like all taxi drivers try to take advantage of you). Split by four people the fare was nothing and a lot better than walking around London at 1 in the morning with a bunch of luggage. So yeah, we made it to our hostel, St. Christopher’s of Hammersmith, at about 1 am and about twenty minutes later we found the entrance (it was inside a bar…so we couldn’t find it haha) and checked in. We made our way up to the room we were supposed to be in, unlocked the door and attempted to go in as quietly as possible so as not to wake everyone else up in the room. The room was small and there were 8 beds in all (4 pairs of bunk beds) and only 3 out of the 8 were available, and there were 4 of us…so we had to go back down to the manager, who was also the bartender, and tell him that we were a bed short. He went upstairs to the room, turned the light on (it’s like 2 am at this point), woke everyone up and asked to see their conformation number. Everyone had one and 20 minutes later we find out that the place had overbooked for that night. One of us had to go sleep in the “pod room” (a room with like 20 other people) and because he was the only guy, Spencer being the perfect gentleman, offered himself up to be the odd man out. Looking back at that night, he probably ended up with the best deal out of all of us because the girls had to go into a room full of sleepy, crabby strangers whom had all just been questioned because of us. We got some angry looks that’s for sure.

So that was our first night in London! I love it.