London
My short time in London was excellent but came with mixed emotions for me. I’d been in Spanish speaking countries for the last three-ish months, and although it was a real treat to be able to communicate fluently again, for the first few days, I missed hearing the language I never really got used to.
The city of London is a wonderful city, bloody expensive, some of the locals told me. Try doing it on the Australian dollar. So after researching options to sell a kidney or liver to extend my stay, but soon realised I couldn’t be in London for too long, unless I started earning the pound, or took a quick trip to China to profit from what God gave me…
For the last three months, I’ve been sweating non-stop, day & night because of the heat in the countries I’ve been, and to be honest; It was preferable to the cold that welcomed us in London. The ‘lovely’ London Drizzle and the every-day occurrence of miserable grey sky was enough to turn even the most sickeningly Prozac-happy person to depression. And this was supposed to be their summer..!
I met up with one of my best mates in Mexico and travelled with him to London. We were already causing chaos in Mexico.., then to make matters worse, we met up with another good friend and the three of us were seriously bad news. We did our bit for the community and to fit in. One early morning, we set up our Vodka drinks stand down at the local oval where all the runners were trying to be healthy for the start of the weekend. Most of them were quite disgusted, but we did have a few “good sports” who drank (straight from the bottle) on every lap with us..!! Fantastic people.
One day we took a field trip down to Brighton Beach because I met a fascinating guy in Costa Rica who resided there and invited us to stay. Now, this might be biased because of the beautiful beaches we have in Australia, and the fact that I’d just come from the Caribbean, but Brighton Beach was the most depressing beach I’d seen. Ever. It was raining, bloody cold, and it felt like a hurricane was just about to hit the coast. Apparently, they do have one nice month in the year if your interested in going – choose carefully, it could be any month. Once acclimatised to the misery, Brighton was quite a fun quirky place (..the pints really helped by the way).. Heaps of narrow ally ways filled with art, music and unique shops, and by luck, the Brighton Festival just happened to be on at the very same time we arrived – so we still had plenty of fun.
A few days later we arrived back in London for more trouble. Within about five minutes of arriving at Camden Town where we found the cheapest accommodation we could (about 150 Australian dollars per night). It was in a less than good area where we were accosted by peddlers regularly and were almost stabbed. It’s funny now, ‘cos we weren’t. Eventually, we found our dodgy dodgy dodgy hotel after giving ‘Stabby McStab face’ and his dog named Terror the slip.
The hotel was dilapidated, complete with blood-stained corridors. We dumped our stuff and went out to wander the streets as soon as possible. Later that night, we redecorated our room after finding an off-licence that sold 9% 500ml tinnies. After several, I’m not sure what happened. I guess the photos say the rest.
Anyway, London was fantastic.. Just hard to stay out of trouble, and hard not to go broke..
Check out some pics:
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