Mind the Gap!

Hello Everyone. Sorry for the delay, but so much has been happening so quickly that it's been a little intimidating to tackle it all in the few moments I have had open for such non-survival-related activities. So here we go--my (mis)adventures to date, the short version.

The first leg of my trip was a lengthy (about 10 days) layover in London con mi chica Alycia. As I've learned in this short amount of time, there are two Rules of London:

1. London is the most comfortable city in the world.
2. London is out to get me. Yep, the whole city.

I have come to believe these two rules to be completely and utterly true, in spite of their apparent contradiction. To elaborate, I was subject to a massive series of mishaps which included 1. the loss of Alycia's mobile number; 2. lack of prior knowledge about the tube worker's strike, resulting in an inability to plan around it, resulting in 3. being dumped off in a tube stop of unknown location somewhere in downtown London in the middle of the night with a good 50 kilos of luggage and 4. being unable to locate said tube station on my map due to there being three additional tube (bus, actually, but i had no idea at the time that bus stops also use the standard tube stop sign) stops of the same name within a few blocks as well as 5. most of the streets (appearing to be) unlabeled.

I did eventually manage to find Alycia, but within 24 hours followed mishap number 6. in which I was taken to a local dive (ahem, club) which promptly flooded and forced everyone to leave. The next night we decided to not push our luck and stay in for the evening, but then I somehow managed to 7. blow out the fuses in Alycia's room by trying to plug in my electric adapter. Apparently unable to find any safe means of entertainment, we attempted to soak up some culture by attending Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera, but the tube being unreliable and us being typical college students (which is to say, running late), we had to try to run there in typical women's "nice" footwear, which, needless to say, is not designed even for everyday walking. This resulted in me 8. ending up with such terrible blisters that I had to spend the rest of the night wandering downtown London (in January!) barefoot, except for the last bit when the sidewalks got so cold that I had to borrow Alycia's socks (they were black, they never get dirty, the longer you wear them... oh, nevermind), and was 9. unable to wear shoes at all for a couple of days afterward. There were a few more mishaps in there someplace, but since they were relatively minor I'll leave them out.

Despite the potential horror of my experience in London, I spent the vast majority of the time wandering the streets grinning like an idiot. Yes, even when I was sure my toes were about to freeze and fall off.

My theory is that in London everything looks so small and dinky (ee! smartcars!!) that you can't help feeling a little bit like you're in Disneyland, which, as everyone knows, is The Happiest Place on Earth (tm). Everyone there is also amazingly friendly and helpful, so I only had to attempt to climb two flights of stairs in the entirety of the tube system without some random guy offering to carry my massive suitcase for me. Also, it wasn't nearly as cold as everyone led me to believe.

Alycia and I also had an interesting pub experience courtesy of Uncle Jack. We picked a random tavern (they're all decorated so nicely, it's hard to choose) called The Rising Sun, fought valiantly for a table (we won!), and per his instructions ordered some "real food" (Yay non-Tesco!) and a couple of pints. Alycia ordered a heart-attack-inducing meat pie and some kind of beer I don't recall the name of, and I got the famous fish and chips and a pint of Stella. The fish and chips was excellent, the Stella was foul. Actually, whatever Alycia was drinking was pretty foul too. Guess I'll just never be a beer drinker.

That was about it. Yay London.