London, England

As promised, I'm back on the blogosphere and i'm going to take you guys through a journey, rather my journey. I wanted to write about my experiences on this trip rather than just highlight the places I visited. I wanna take you guys through what I felt, the people I met, the little things that I found interesting, the big things that overwhelmed me rather than just give the typical tourist spot shpiel that we run into all too often on the interwebs.. So here goes..

The moment I stepped off the flight in Gatwick, I knew I was in the UK by the sheer number of turbans at the airport. If you think the Toronto airport was bad, wait till you see Gatwick. I slowly realized that the more I explored London, the less indians I saw, which quite honestly surprised me. The majority of people I ran into were in fact English.. who'd a thunk it right? Anywho, we went off to a hostel (for the first time) and realized that there was one bathroom for 10 of us, but we did share a room with some interesting people. The first person was Sabrina, who was an exchange student from Brazil working in Madrid, visiting london for the weekend. Later that night we actually went to a pubcrawl with Sabrina and her two portuguese friends who were a treat for the girls in our party. (Gustavo and ...sorry.. can't remember the other one.) The second bar we went to definitely took the cake with an AWESOME Live Band and beer for just 3 pounds.. yeah that's $6 but apparently that's cheap?? I took a break between the 3rd and 4th bars to go meet a friend's sister and realized I NEVER WANT TO LIVE IN THIS CITY... It was sooo crowded, i felt suffocated just walking around, not to mention constantly holding my own bum to make sure I wasn't being pickpocketed.. It was a miracle that I was able to locate the person in the middle of Piccadilly circus without ever having met them before, that too on a friday night..

Our hostel was conveniently located in South Kensington, about 15 minutes from Trafalgar square. We immediately jumped at the opportunity to get on those double decker bus (on the upper level of course).. We also stopped and grabbed pictures inside the infamous red telephone booths.. (couldn't resist) We spent the rest of the day just going to Trafalgar square, which we thought was Piccadilly circus until the next day when someone told us the place we went to was not really Piccadilly circus.. We also managed to get the most breathtaking view of London that first day on top of the London Eye.. In hindsight, it was expensive (17 pounds), but definitely worth the view..

If there's one thing that we did a lot of in London, it was museums.. and after 4 days, we realized that 4 days wasn't enough to see the museums in London. We realized that we could have spent 4 days in JUST the British Museum with the breathtaking Rosetta Stone... We managed to get a look at the Museum of Natural History (with the blue whale that could fit a few dozen elephants inside it), The Museum of Science and Technology, ( with gutenberg's printing press) The British Museum (with far too many things to count)...

I think that we were very lucky to find a free walking tour very early on this trip. Our guide, (hot with a british accent) was a history student born and brought up right in London gave us a 3 hour tour focused mostly on british royalty and their absurd torture tactics.. I found out where the term "a stiff drink" comes from and why I will never order one again. The stories of Guy Fawkes (V for Vendetta), Henry VIII, Why the celebrate all festivals but one in Trafalgar square, and many many more.. Some of these stories are common knowledge but others blew my mind away. Let's just say I gained new found respect for the Geneva Convention.. This respect only grew further after our trip to the Tower of London and actually seeing the place of torture and the crown jewels (the latter made up mostly of stolen jewels)..

On our final day in London, we met Merve from Istanbul, our roommate who replaced Sabrina. Merve and her colleague were on their way to northern england where she was taking up a residency to become a doctor. Merve was nice enough to give us a Turkish good luck charm that she promised would keep us safe for the duration of our trip and that we should have it on us the whole time. Sure enough, I kept it on me and still get questions to date on what it is and where I got it..

London taught me two things.. One, horses and humans cannot press the same button to cross a street and two, we should not try to see everything there is to see in a city because it's just not possible. Luckily we learnt early enough so we adapted.. Stay tuned for the wonders of the sex capital of the world..