"Ever put a hammer in that loop?"
We checked in, removed travel watch from our Visa cards, paid for the the all you can drink VIP lounge and knocked back a couple vodka sodas hopin' to pass out on the plane. Everyone had said there goodbyes and I even managed to squeeze out a surprising number of tears. Nick was rockin' a foxy pair of Gap carpenter pants trying to assert himself as manliest and handiest team member. In the end I'd say it was more like a four way tie for least handy.
After my first Vodka-induced nap I woke up pretty excited, London in ~7 hours!!! Finally a chance to forget about the stresses of the past few weeks, ie. worried about my fam, worried about starting a career, fighting with a boy. Yech.
When I awoke from my second nap we were flying into the sunrise. I passed out again by listening to Portishead.
Wednesday, July 14th
Arrived in London the morning of the 14th and started to navigate the London Underground. We made it to King's Cross station and finally located Clink78, the hostel where Andrea and I were staying. This was my first hostel experience and... well, it didn't turn my off of the concept, but it was hardly luxurious.
We stashed our bags in the luggage room, which required forcing the door and then hawking our stuff into enormous piles of black and navy luggage. We hoped we would get it back but were too sick of carrying it to be really concerned. After freshing up we headed back to King's Cross to find Platform 9 3/4, much to Nick's embarrassment. King's Cross is huuuge so we had to [sheepishly] ask one of the underground staff to direct us. She knew exactly what we wanted before we even got to her. We proceeded to take a bunch of silly pictures. I even shot a sexy Harry Potter one thinking of my buddy Deborah but, alas, my camera is gone forever.
Next we made our way to a pub and had a few rounds of beer and cheese toasties. A toastie is kinda like a grilled cheese except not very good. Our server at that first pub was friendly though and [accidentally?] didn't charge us for one of our rounds.
After the pub we followed Nick and met his buddy Tim at his beautiful flat on Dingley Road. When we arrived at Tim's we immediately passed out. Andi and I shared a couch and slept like this (I've tried to reproduce what I drew in my journal, for some reason I found this extra hilarious):
Suffice to say once I awoke from my coma I had to spend several minutes getting my blood to circulate back through my body. All my limbs had pins and needles.
Once we were all mobile again we headed out in Tim's area which I think was called Islington. We started at a legion bar first, where we were joined by Tim's buddy Voitek (sp?). The legion closed early and the next bar was very cool looking but pretty empty. There I encountered my first example of Xtreme Londoner PDA - serious 45 minute on the couch tonsil hockey in a decently lit room with only one other group of people. They must still live with their parents.
The next club we went to was sweet, I believe it was called Mother, or maybe mother bar. The music was well chosen and Tim and Voitek wanted to dance, so us inhibited Canadians sacked up and drank enough liquor to get looooose. The boys at this bar were a little bit grabby, but Nick was kind enough to cockblock for me for the night. We had loads of fun that night, my best memories were definitely Nick and I's unofficial dance off to Blow Ya Mind and disco dancing with a hilarious Aussie boy.
Voitek went home relatively early but the rest of us closed down the club then walked back to Tim's place, making brief stops on the way for Kebab (that keb-aaaaaaab) and photo ops with old Irishmen. Tim called Andi and I a cab and we finally crash at Clink around 4am. It was an excellent day, totally worth how terribly it compounded our jetlag.
EC
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