Well, I've finally got a good few minutes to sit down and regale you with more than just the stories of the places I've been over the last few days. We're on the train to Holyhead right now, and if the battery indicator on my laptop is to be believed, I should have around 2 ½ hours typing time before I have to go dark again. It was quite the thing to actually get where we are right now, so I think I'll start there. First we packed upp our stuff absurdly early and left the hostel, only to discover that we couldn't actually get on the tube at St. Paul's station between 7:30 and 10 am. Okay, fine. We then walked to Bank station. Well, the walk took us 10 minutes or so, then once we actually went down the stairs and through the turnstyles it took us another 15 to actually get to the train platform. At this point we're thinking it would have almost been quicker just to walk to Euston station. So we finally get to Euston station and manage to get our BritRail passes validated. Then we stand in front of the boards and wait for the train we need to take to be assigned a platform number. Once that happens, we, and a whole lot of other people, make a mad dash for the train. Neither of us had any idea how it worked and we both ended up sitting down in what were probably the wrong seats, so when April asked we ended up having to move. It's all very confusing but we did manage to get seats and now we're on our way to the ferry terminal in Holyhead. So now on to my own personal impressions of London. Keeping in mind that I was only there for about 3 days, these are my own personal views and should no way influence how you might feel about the exact same places. Everything changes day to day and your own experiences might be totally different from mine. So this is my own, totally biased view. Enjoy!
Garbage cans. Do the English have something against garbage cans? Do they really want us to just give up and throw our litter in the street? There are a serious lack of garbage cans everywhere we've been so far. It seems like every time one of us has something to throw out, we end up spending 10 minutes or so just looking for a stupid garbage can. You never realize what a convenience these are until there are none. Just this morning we each spent a good chunk of time wandering around the Euston rail station looking for a single garbage can. And you know what? There were none. Not a single damn one. We ended up just leaving our garbage on a counter in the cafeteria because we couldn't find one. Who builds a cafeteria with no garbage cans?
Ventilation. It seems as though no one who ever built a building in London ever thought about creating some sort of ventilation system. This goes for the entire Underground system as well. As soon as you set foot in a tube station you break out in an instant sweat. It's swelteringly hot and humid, and gets very uncomfortable very quickly. I've no idea how you could do that on a regular basis. The rooms, bathrooms and shower stalls are no exception to the no ventilation rule. It's fine if there are windows in the room (that's if you can get the other people in your hostel room to leave them open), but in the bathrooms and shower stalls the air just sits there, heating up and stagnant. And if the person in the bathroom before you left a parting stench, there's nowhere for it to go, is there? So you're left to either wait for another stall (not an option if you're in a line waiting, which there always is), or hold your breath and pee quickly. It's even worse in the showers, where the steam has nowhere to go. So you get out of the shower and start sweating now that you're clean, because the simple act of you being in the shower and using even lukewarm water has heated the shower stall up. I'm hoping that it's not this bad everywhere in London, that it's just the hostel and all the tourist traps, but who knows?
Noise. It's noisy in London. Very noisy. I'm sure April is already irritated with me for all the times I've said “what?” while we're standing somewhere, walking somewhere, or sitting somewhere. I theorize it's because of all the taller, stone and brick buildings. Sound echoes and has nowhere to go, so it just bounces around and amplifies a lot, thus making it noisier than it really is. It might help if there were a little greenery to absorb some of the sound, but trees and other plants are pretty scarce, nearly nonexistent, thus the sound just keeps on bouncing around. I thought my hearing was pretty good before we got here, but now I'm starting to wonder. Or maybe it's just the ambient noise is so much that I can't hear myself think. Either way it's irritating.
Other Hostellers. I'm sure this will change as we go between hostels, but there are always personalities that grate against each other. There was one girl in our hostel room I dubbed “Hair Spray Girl”, because each of the mornings she was up before us she'd use copious amounts of hair spray from an aerosol can. You'd be interested to learn that sound can actually wake you up at times. She was a bit loud in the mornings, too. None of the other women in the room woke me up when they were getting up and leaving, but Hair Spray Girl managed to get me out of a deep sleep each and every time she left the room or got out of bed. And she thought we all shared her views on the windows being closed at night. She would actually come into the room and close all the windows before she went to bed. So she may have been comfortable while the rest of us sweltered. Finally one of the older women actually asked her to leave them open because it was so hot. She was from Alaska, so she was even worse off than us in the heat and humidity. Hair Spray Girl also thought it appropriate to dry her cleaned underwear on the window hook. While I might not have done this for fear of my underpants flying out the screen-less window and ending up in the street, she seemed to have no problem with it. She also felt it necessary to yell at the older woman from Alaska at one point because she was snoring and keeping Hair Spray Girl awake. As though yelling at her could get her to stop, because she could magically control the snoring somehow. The other hostellers in our room were actually pretty cool. One woman was apparently on her way to New York to meet a guy (April suspects she met him on the internet), and was very apologetic about the smell her hair dye was making in the room, even though neither of us could smell it. And despite the snoring, Alaska-Lady was also very nice.
That's been my impression of London so far. As for travel updates, we've made it to Dublin after a relatively uneventful train ride and ferry ride. I will say that the Irish Ferries are pretty impressive. A lot fancier and bigger than the BC Ferries I'm used to. This evening we went to a pub nearby and had meat pies and beer. I can't remember the name of the beer I had, but it was pretty good and was going down way too easy. I'm sure there will be plenty more of that later.
I'll do my best to keep the updates coming, but I can't guarantee anything because we're off on our bus tour tomorrow and I'm not sure what the internet access would be like. So keep an eye on this URL...
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