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sigelphoenix at 04:39pm on 18/07/2007 under london
sigelphoenix at 04:39pm on 18/07/2007 under londonAs I've mentioned, the reason for my two-week disappearance from LJ was that I was in the UK for the last half of June. ![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
zinjadu's parents gave her a trip to London for her graduation, and let her bring me along. Now I'm finally getting around to writing about it (and getting the pictures off my camera, for that matter).
We flew out on Saturday the 16th, getting in to London in the late morning of the 17th. Our departure was not exactly the most exciting; it actually involved a lot of inactive waiting. First, we got to the airport early in order to leave time for security clearance, and ended up with about two hours to spare. Then, of course, was waiting through the 9 hour flight. After that was more waiting, because we forced ourselves to stay awake until it was evening in London time, and the hours crawled by until we could OMG SLEEP.
The only thing really notable about the flight is that I watched Children of Men and put myself in a weird, unsettled mood for hours. It was the first time I'd seen the movie, and that sucker is disturbing.
Once we left the airport and got into London proper, we found ourselves in a maze of streets. (Aszinjadu put it, the street layout was formed by cows.) Luckily, our hostel was just down the street from the Tube station.
Unluckily ... well, the hostel kind of sucked ass.zinjadu and I can give the good/bad/ugly about the places we stayed to anyone who's interested. Suffice it to say I understand why this hostel relied so much on its location as a selling point. It was good for being close by to the places we wanted to go, and not much else. :P
The people we shared a room with were nice enough, for the most part; in general, we found that travelers mostly kept to their own groups. This made it easier for me to adjust to group living, though I still found that I had to shed some of my modesty.
Our first day was pretty quiet. We did a little bit of exploring to pass the time, but it was pretty low-key since we were both exhausted, and my body was rebelling against the upheaval and time change (luckily that went away within a few days). We found Carnaby Street - a line of stores that was interesting enough, though we preferred markets to malls; Covent Garden - a site of both market *and* mall; and Brewer Street - which has a section dedicated purely to sex shops (of which we encountered quite a few, during these two weeks. Good old London).
We eventually retreated to the hostel common room, which luckily had a quiet section where we could read and avoid the crowd. I soon discovered that hostel common rooms, and the level of behavior there, feed my misanthropic tendencies. >_< But that first night, at least, we were too sleepy to notice.
zinjadu's parents gave her a trip to London for her graduation, and let her bring me along. Now I'm finally getting around to writing about it (and getting the pictures off my camera, for that matter).We flew out on Saturday the 16th, getting in to London in the late morning of the 17th. Our departure was not exactly the most exciting; it actually involved a lot of inactive waiting. First, we got to the airport early in order to leave time for security clearance, and ended up with about two hours to spare. Then, of course, was waiting through the 9 hour flight. After that was more waiting, because we forced ourselves to stay awake until it was evening in London time, and the hours crawled by until we could OMG SLEEP.
The only thing really notable about the flight is that I watched Children of Men and put myself in a weird, unsettled mood for hours. It was the first time I'd seen the movie, and that sucker is disturbing.
Once we left the airport and got into London proper, we found ourselves in a maze of streets. (As
zinjadu put it, the street layout was formed by cows.) Luckily, our hostel was just down the street from the Tube station.Unluckily ... well, the hostel kind of sucked ass.
zinjadu and I can give the good/bad/ugly about the places we stayed to anyone who's interested. Suffice it to say I understand why this hostel relied so much on its location as a selling point. It was good for being close by to the places we wanted to go, and not much else. :PThe people we shared a room with were nice enough, for the most part; in general, we found that travelers mostly kept to their own groups. This made it easier for me to adjust to group living, though I still found that I had to shed some of my modesty.
Our first day was pretty quiet. We did a little bit of exploring to pass the time, but it was pretty low-key since we were both exhausted, and my body was rebelling against the upheaval and time change (luckily that went away within a few days). We found Carnaby Street - a line of stores that was interesting enough, though we preferred markets to malls; Covent Garden - a site of both market *and* mall; and Brewer Street - which has a section dedicated purely to sex shops (of which we encountered quite a few, during these two weeks. Good old London).
We eventually retreated to the hostel common room, which luckily had a quiet section where we could read and avoid the crowd. I soon discovered that hostel common rooms, and the level of behavior there, feed my misanthropic tendencies. >_< But that first night, at least, we were too sleepy to notice.