London, England

    London is magical place. It might have to do with the fact that hearing and understanding your own language after a month of feeling like an idiot is kind of magical. The moment I stepped off the plane I was smiling ear to ear. British accents make me giddy. On the train to our hostel I heard a stop called “Pickadilly,” how cute is that? 

    We stayed in this crazy cool youth hostel called “Wombats” and the sign looks like an old school broadway sign. I knew I would like it right off the bat. (Wombats has hostels in other cool places too, if you were looking for a hostel). I had this dream about my hostel bunk mates (because we were in a 6 bed mixed room) would be some dreamy foreigners and we (my bff Gabby) would frolic about London with them, then in couple years marry them and have a double wedding and stuff, nothing creepy at all. That didn’t happen. We only saw our female bunkmates for like 20 minutes total and they spoke Russian. 

So here’s a cool fact about hostels: 90% of them are made up of Australians. Okay that’s a falsified percentile because I’ve only stayed in one hostel in my life and it was probably only 40% Australians. The point is that I like Australians because they are fun and speak my language but we will pick back up on that when I talk about that later. 

Our hostel had a bar, rightly named “Wombar.” We sat down for probably 2 minutes and then guess who wonders up to us? 2 Australians. Would you look at that? One of them was a male stripper, kind of. I told him about the opportunities in America to dance for “Thunder Down Under” he didn’t seem very interested in it. Bummer. 

I can’t remember what day we did what because I’ve been a bad blogger so I am going to put them in the order that I remember them in:

Day 1ish:

   We went to the British Museum which is so packed full of everything you kind of feel like your brain is melting. There is this statue that claims to have a thorn from Jesus’s crown of thorn. Everything was the extreme version of itself. Being royalty seems like the best idea to have. You can tell people “Hey go find me Jesus’s thorn and make me an intricate case for it” and people will do it for you because you’re pretty much God to them. So I’ve decided that in my next life that’s what I’m going to be. 

(This supposedly has a thorn from Jesus's thorn of crowns)

   People say that English food is not great but those people didn’t choose the correct thing. Yes, they do serve baked beans with runny eggs and tomatoes and yes just looks like the worst of all food groups but there are beautiful things too. I had a chicken pie with mashed potatoes and it was a dream in my belly. We ate it at this pub across the street from the British Museum and it was decorated like Harry Potter’s favorite pub if he had one. My favorite part of the pub was the group of four old men who were obviously best friends and were catching up over lunch. They were just the happiest people I’ve seen over hear in Europe. I would call them jolly even. This is one of my favorite scenes of my entire trip, just happy people being so content with everything around them. 

     I think it was the first day that we went on the Jack the Ripper tour. I’ve never really known what he was about but I knew he was a London murderer mostly because of the TV show Penny Dreadful that I fell in love with in France.  Our tour guide was awesome. It’s his job to take people around and talk about a murderer every night and yet, he seemed so stoked on it. Which sounds creepy but it wasn’t. So this Jack the Ripper is a really uncool guy. (He was first nicknamed “Leather Apron”) There are 5 main murders that they believed was done by the same man. All of the victims were prostitutes. All of them were almost beheaded because this dude was so harsh whilst cutting their necks. Then he would gut them, literally. Sometimes he would steal a uterus or kidney or both. The last murder was really terrifying. She was just massacred. He made her into a puddle of human flesh in sort the form of a woman. They never caught this guy. He’s obviously dead now, but I still was creeped out. 

     We went out to the cool part of town and went to a bar that sign was a Mexican wrestler mask and I knew I would have a good time here. So here’s what happened: I drank too much. I may or may not have kissed a random British man after we talked about the Olympics because I guess that is my secret turn on? Talk to me about the Olympics, baby. I don’t remember if he was good looking. I know his shirt was black and white and that he was not from Cambridge. Is Cambridge a place? I thought it was a school? I have no idea. When in Europe, forget yourself and do something you would never do, right? Right. But seriously, we were like in a spotlight. I almost threw up in his mouth. So that’s cute. I think his name was Jonathan and I was disappointed that it wasn't very British. 

Day 2ish :

   The next day I was a bit hungover. By a bit I mean a lot. But did I let that stop me? No way. So onward I went. Where did I go? The Westminster Abbey. That place is neat and I feel like my explanation will do it no justice. So I will say this: British people like to bury people very close to their enemies. 

   We ate at another great place and ate even more great food and then we saw big ben! Oh I felt like I was watching Peter Pan. Nothing here seems real, they all seem like they are out of a scene in a movie. Probably because I’ve only seen them in movies but it makes it awe inducing. There’s just something about London in general that says “Marta there is something special here for you,” so I need to return there asap. 

    We went to the Wombar once again and played giant truth or dare Jenga which then turned into “What are the Odds” Jenga. This game is nuts. I hate doing things that make me feel weird when I can avoid it otherwise. But I ended up doing two things I would’ve never done but I reaped great benefits from it. I asked a group of strangers what the meaning of QTC or QRC or something with a Q in it. They turned out to be very stoked on the subject because it’s Australian and they were Australian and then they became part of the game. The other thing I did was poured myself a beer from somebody else's pitcher. I only reaped benefits from this, I got a free beer.

   Here’s the thing. I really loved my new Australian friends and our sexy Canadian friend that I may have not mentioned before. They were my favorite foreigners I met on my entire trip but we didn’t exchange anything but first names (Joe, Lauren, Dylan and my Canadian hottie friend Tyler) so I guess we’ll all just be long lost buddies across the world. So shout out to my Aussie (and Canadian) friends who are hugely muscular giant baby men afraid of the nice part of London. You guys made the night fantastic. (Is Sydney the safest place on Earth? Because they were significantly afraid and it was not scary at all). 

So the what I learned from this trip is: to have 5 hours to get to the airport (pointless story about missing flights) and that my next trip is going to have to be London and Ireland. In 2 years. I am saving up now. So get ready London, I’m coming back for you.