First Day in England

I think I'm converting this into my travel blog. Now it will be catered to England, hence the title.

I pre-wrote this because internet is expensive.

England
The past two days have been great. I’m exhausted because we have already toured the city. Du Puy, our professor, knows how to travel well.

Our flight was smooth. We had a direct flight. The flight took about seven hours. Its ahead of us by five hours so we landed at 7am.

On our first day, we were fairly busy. We checked into our hostel. Our hostel is more family oriented than youth, so it’s by no means a place for people to party at. It’s very nice. Our room has four bunks for the four guys. The room is pretty big for hostel standards. We will be here until next Friday.

After we checked into our hostel we explored the area. We’re staying near St. Pancras/ King’s Cross. It’s a little out of the central part of the city but there are plenty of restaurants and places to visit nearby. We had to push through the jet lag so we walked a good couple miles at DuPuy’s pace, which is surprisingly fast for a sixty-five year old man who just got off of a plane without much sleep. We saw a good amount for the brief walk, which is starting to become a theme of the trip.

We had to take a two-hour nap because we were dying. It really helped to revive us. It was not nearly as bad of a transition as it was when I went to Paris. I just took a shot of espresso and I was ready to go. We headed down to Covent Garden, which is a converted marketplace into a retail area, and had a few beers. We decided to drink first then eat, I don’t really know why, so consequently we felt the beer a little than we would have otherwise. We stayed out until about 9pm, until we could really stand up without passing out. Besides the exhaustion, we had a great night.

Today we had an even busier day. This is a good preview of what the trip will be like. We will pretty much be up at 8am, eat breakfast, meet DuPuy at 9am somewhere in the city, and then site see until about 5pm. Today we saw a bunch of things. We toured St. Paul’s and the surrounding area. The cathedral is beautiful. We walked along the river and saw a good chunk of development. We went on a tour of the Globe Theater, very cool. We had a charming Scottish actress give us a tour. She had the greatest accent I’ve heard so far. We continued down the river, passed the Bank of London along the way, or that might have been earlier in the day, and eventually crossed the millennium bridge. We explored Tate Modern a bit. We were wiped out so Emma and I only stayed on one floor. I am beginning to accept that contemporary art is generally not my cup of tea. I might be a little too prudish for some of the content or unintelligent.

DuPuy then released us to go off on our own. On our walk home, we found a good hamburger place to eat dinner. It was pretty expensive. It cost 10 pounds, which is about 16 dollars. And I think that is not very expensive for London standards. We will most likely go over our weekly per diem.

We pretty much walked everywhere. At one point, we took a bus and that my feet were incredibly appreciate of it. My feet are still in a little bit of pain from today. I have to get use to this pace. It’s a bit of a contrast to the very limited walking I did this winter break. My body notices the difference for sure.

We are preparing our plans for tonight now. Since this is our only Saturday night in London, the general sentiment is that this will be our big night out. We have a few recommendations from the front desk where to go. I have a feeling it will be a good night.

Emma and I are going to Hillsong tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.