December 15, 2011-2:37 PM-London Time
We are at the National Gallery right now and Dr. M stopped at the cafe to get some bottled water. We just finished with the Portrait Gallery. We saw the original miniature of Jane Austen that was done by her sister Cassandra. I gasped when I first saw it because we had been searching for it high and low and to have it suddenly before my eyes was stunning
I want to go into more detail about the rest of yesterday and this morning, but I don't have time right now. I will write more later.
So now it begins. Once again, I apologize that my journal entries are out of order with the days, but I'll still try to go into as much detail as possible. Please rewind your mind to what I wrote in the previous blog post. We were just about to land at Gatwick Airport...
Journal Entry 5
10:39 PM-London Time
Yesterday can really only be described in three words...
Oh. My. Lands.
We went from not sleeping on the plane to going through Immigration. The woman who stamped my passport was scary. She asked me all sorts of questions about my stay: how much money had, who I was traveling with; I tried to be polite, but she made me really flustered. She looked like she was annoyed and didn't believe me when I said that I was on vacation instead of a school trip because I said I was a student and was traveling with a professor (she didn't believe that Dr. M was a friend :-/).
After we survived Immigration, we collected our luggage (all of it thankfully) and went to the train station. While we were standing on the platform, I was pulling out my Travel England book almost constantly to check street names and stations (since thankfully the book had a street-by-street map of London). We hit rush hour on the train from Gatwick to Victoria, so it was crowded and we had to move our luggage around a lot. I was tired and almost to the point of tears by that point because we were trying to figure out where to go next; whether to immediately pick up the London Passes we had purchased because we needed the Travelcard to use the Tube or to drop off our luggage first at the hostel or to got to Dr. M's hotel.
Thankfully, Dr. M suggested that we sit down and have a nice cup of tea first. We dragged our luggage all through the inside and outside of Victoria Station looking for a tea shop. Dr. M asked one man where to find a nice place to get tea (he looked like Daniel Craig to me, only not as pretty and he was near a news stand smoking) and he directed us to a Starbuck's (unbeknownst to us first because he just said it was a nice place to have a cup of tea :). We settled on Starbuck's for tea even though they did not serve us in china cups and we finally got a lovely rest. We chatted for a while and I finally relaxed again (at least a little).
After tea, we bought day passes for the tube so we could get around. Dr. M purchased a 7-day pass because she didn't buy a London Pass (which we didn't know until we had actually gotten to London). Dr. M aptly suggested that we drop off our luggage before we go anywhere else around London.
May I say that figuring out the London Streets and tube all on the same day with no sleep for the past two nights was an ordeal. The tube was crowded and we had all our luggage with us. I'll leave the rest to imagination...
We took the tube from Victoria to King's Cross St. Pancras, which is the closest tube station to The Clink 78 hostel where we made reservations. The Clink 78 Youth Hostel, Islington, London After trying to figure out the roads from my travel book (ugh!), Dr. M went into a Travel Lodge to get directions (Dr. M is never afraid to ask directions :)
We finally arrived at the Clink exhausted from hauling everything around (the Clink has a steep flight of stairs up to the entrance) and I honestly don't know how Dr. Miller survived with a recent knee replacement. We dropped off our luggage at around noon, but we couldn't check-in yet. Dr. Miller got some better directions to get to the tube and us three girls plopped on the lobby couch in a fit of incoherent exhaustion.
More tomorrow, time for bed :)
Just so I can keep some continuity with the order of days, I am going to go ahead and finish telling about our first day in London.
....we rested for a while in the lobby and got some bottled water from the vending machine (this was the first time I actually used British money to buy something, because Dr. M had bought our tea at Starbuck's earlier). I was so worn out by that point that I was shaking.
But we finally got up because it was about the time for Dr. Miller to check-in (if she was allowed early check-in). Pearl, Nicole, and I took turns carrying her luggage. It was about noon when we left the Clink for Dr. Miller's hotel on Sussex Gardens near Hyde Park...we didn't get there until 2:00. Someone had given Dr. M the wrong tube station, so we ended up at Hyde Park Corner flipping through my street-by-street map of London. I remember looking over the map and saying,
"We're on the wrong side."
And Dr. M replying, "Of the street?"
With me stating, "Of the park."
We got back on the tube till we arrived at Lancaster Gate Tube Station. After taking the long way to the Alexandra Hotel we finally made it in one piece, even more tired than before.
Dr. M checked-in and we went up to her room to use the toilet. She prayed for us before we left because we still had to travel to Charing Cross Road to pick up our London Passes. We got lost on our way back to Lancaster Gate station because we took a right when everyone had told us to take a left (in fact, if we had merely LOOKED left when we went right, the station would have been only 50 ft away :-/ ). Then when we arrived at Charing Cross station we figured out that Charing Cross station was not on Charing Cross Road. So we back tracked to Leicester Square station, which is actually ON Charing Cross Road, and asked people where 11a Charing Cross Road (the address of where we had to pick up the London Passes). The building turned out to be a kiosk in the middle of the road. We had to go down winding stairs to get to the place underground, but thankfully there was no one there but the woman at the desk. After completing our mission, we finally returned to the hostel without further incident.
I don't know how we managed it but we found a supermarket nearby and bought some soup and rolls for 5.38 pounds. We prepared the soup at the hostel in the kitchen (I must say we were very proud of ourselves) and then we went back to our room to prepare for bed. Pearl and I took a shower, I called my Mom to let her know we were alive, and then we were all in bed by 7:30 PM.
Thank you for sticking it out and reading this long, excruciating description :) But I must say that if you think reading this post was long, living it was 10 times longer. In the next post I will actually tell you happened on day three :)
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| The Clink Hostel was actually a renovated Courthouse, so they still had a lot of the signs up :) |
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