The trip that had a troubled start turned, as the English would say, lovely. The first set of bombings hit London four days before I did. Needless to say I was a tad concerned, not really so much for my own safety, I mean, they didn’t America or Spain with a follow up attack, so I decided to put that part out of my mind (smart move, eh?). I was more concerned with what it would have done to the city. Would they be cancelling Les Mis because it was somehow a target? Would they search me every time I got on the underground? Would he tubes even be running? Anyway, I spent way more time watching the London updates than I shold have and I didn’t get much sleep trying to get all of my work done before I left (which I failed to do, sorry Pat).

I arrived in London rather tired at 11:30 or so at night after a nearly sleepless journey. After my quickest trip through customs ever and armed with reservations and directions to a cheap and well located hostel, I set out on the London Underground. Unfortunately the bombings and the late-hour kicked me out of the tubes only halfway through my journey and my tired mind fled from the complicated bus schedule. An exorbinate taxi ride later, I ended up with a crabby hostel desk attendant who stuffed me in a loud, hot, and packed room where I tried to sleep through my first night in England. I was not having fun. Three hours later at 5 in the AM, I decided that any more sleep would be impossible for the time being, so I started wandering. The troubles of the previous night dissappeared, I was in London! My two days there kind of run together, but I saw so many things, theatre, art, grand churches, ancient buildings, wide parks filled with people from every background, and the history was intense, everything there had such an incredible amount of the past associated with it. Besides some tube redirects, the bombings didn’t slow them down hardly at all, I decided that I really liked the English people.

I met Michelle at the beleagered Kings Cross station and headed north by train. Due to a bomb scare on a train in front of us, it turned into an epic journey. When we finally reached her flat in Harrogate, sleep was not far behind. And what a sleep it was, the best in several weeks, I can’t tell you how good that felt. I woke up at 7 in the morning totally refreshed and then added another hour just for good measure. Then Michelle kicked into tour guide mode, which, to be honest, caught me off guard. If you know Michelle, then you know why. She was actually really good at it, maybe when the agency is done with her, she’ll get a new job in the tourism industry. We did just about all of northern England: York, the city whose walls looked rather ineffectual (no wonder William Wallace sacked it); the east coast, Whitby and the ocean cliffs to the south, eating raw grains and marveling at the million birds along the great coastline; Skipton’s bizarre market where you can buy any kind of store-bought goods; the huge Fountains Abbey, where the white monks (cistercian) contemplated god; a surprise pops concert in Harrogate’s gardens; a variety of lively and lived-in pubs; the incomperable lake district, home of the best rainbow I’ve ever seen and the best terrain in England; a bizzare english flick while in Leeds; the over commercialized Alnwick Castle, of noted Harry Potter fame (Michelle will deny this part of the trip ever occured, but really it was interesting too); Bringham rocks, an amazing place to rock climb and watch the sunset and rabbits; and Cambridge, the pretentious university whose colleges try to charge you just to walk through them, luckily Michelle and I look enough like students that nobody asked us for money (it helps that we were a tad sneaky…).

It was a wonderful start to my European tour led by a terrific guide. You should book your own tours with her quickly though since she’ll be in Deutchland next summer. Hmmm, can anyone say World Cup?

I could wax poetic about each event, but I’m probably testing your patience even with this brief survey of my trip, so I’ll behave and wrap it up for now. If you really want to hear more, drop me an e-mail and I’ll dig into my scribblings for you. And stay tuned for Armenia: Land of Dust and Seasoned Meat…

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2005 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.