Saturday, October 15th. London, UK. Birthday

What a crazy crazy bus ride. First of all, its a bus, like a Greyhound bus kind of thing, so we kind of knew it wouldn't be great. But the line to check in was a sign of things to come. Long long long, in length and in time. Once on the bus, it was pretty smooth sailing, except for several stops to pick up more passengers (which we didn't expect, and had to keep rearranging our seating to accommodate the additional people). The real kicker was the boarder crossing from Belgium to France. Not that there was anything particularly interesting about it, other than the fact that it was like 100 feet from the boarder check from France to the UK (on the European side of the channel). So we had to go through the whole thing again (although the British were much more thorough, as we were warned they would be). Once through, we put the bus on a train (right?) to go under the English channel (right?!?). This leg was particularly uncomfortable, as we couldn't see what was going on, but were bouncing along something feroce. Once in the UK, it was a fairly straight shot to London, but the bus driver was steadily loosing his touch with the clutch, further making any sleep impossible (it was an overnight bus, so the idea was to save money on lodging by sleeping on the bus...so much for that idea).

Upon arriving at the coach station, at 4:30am (an hour before we had even planned to be there), we were all cold, tired, lost, and very confused. After stumbling around for some time, we eventually resolved to part ways and find our respective lodging (the other two were staying with friends, and I in a hostel). This too was quite interesting, catching the first tube on a Saturday morning with all the left-over partiers from the night before. It took quite some time for me to find my hostel on the Isle of the Dogs, in East London, not exclusively because more than half of the underground system was shutdown for maintenance. However, I did finally make it to The Great Eastern, several hours before they would let me check in. So I dropped off my pack, and returned to the streets.

Like any uninformed traveler would (I suspect), I set out to find the touristy stuff on my own and to get my bearings. So in a whirlwind of mapless fury, I managed to see (not necessarily visit, mind you) darn near everything I knew I wanted to see in London, in a matter of 6 hours. Big Ben, Houses of Parlement, Westminster Abby, The Eye, Buckingham Palace, The financial District, Tower of London, London Bridge, Tower Bridge...it was nuts. After the nonsense, I stopped for lunch at an upscale Italian joint on Piccadilly (hey, its my birthday after all, I deserve a little luxury every now and then). However, a big lunch combined with no sleep and non-stop travel, led me to quickly retire to the hostel, despite it being but 3pm.

Now I am sitting in said hostel, planning my next move. How to celebrate my birthday in London, alone? Well, I do whatever the heck I want, I suppose!