I have arrived! After a relatively smooth journey by plane and subway, we arrived at a totally dark and rainy London City Airport. Quite remarkable that the weather during the flight was completely fine and the minute we set foot on British ground it starts pouring. However, this did not seem to be a problem at first, since we could reach our hostel mainly by tube. We arrived at Marylebone Station at about 5 pm and prepared ourselves for a short walk in the rain. Only a few blocks was what the map showed. Unfortunately, there were more exits from the tube station and of course we walked into the wrong direction. The fact that most of the street names we encountered didn`t show on our map, didn`t strike us as a problem at first oddly enough. So we kept on walking with our heavy backpacks till we arrived at Baker Street Station. Damnit! That was the complete opposite location of our goal destination. So we had to walk all the way back, asked some fellows, and finally arrived totally soaked at the hostel/bar/dumb. But at least we were dry. We checked in, changed clothes and went to find a nice place to eat. A friend of Henk showed us the way to a very good and affordable French restaurant.
The food was delicious and the first sip of wine made everything even better. After dinner we set for a dodgy bar near the City District with friends from friends. A really nice pub, hidden away in a dark alley so not quite the obvious choice for tourists. So we were lucky to be accompanied by a local. (Who is in fact from Canada, but has lived in the city for about 7 years.) The other guys were also not native London citizens, but mainly from Australia, one from New Zealand and onefrom Ireland. Talked a lot and even received a lecture about the current state of the Aboriginal situation in Australia, which was really fascinating, even though they thought they were boring the crap out of us.
The night at the pub ended at eleven…quite early for Holland standards, but apparently for London this is a normal closing time. Grabbed a cab and drove to one of the guy`s place, had a glass of wine and aimed for a night in reggae atmosphere. At this point we were all the way in northern London, which is about a 15 minutes cab drive away from the more central city. The reggae night never happened, since the queue was so extremely long we decided to bail and head home. Definitely a pity, but the night had been fun anyway and I finally had a chance to talk some English for more than 20 minutes!
Discussion
No comments yet.