I left LAX on January 1st at 9:30 Pacific Standard Time to go up to San Francisco where from there, I would commence my true journey to England. Well, I land in SF at 11AM and the flight to London's Heathrow Airport (the airport in "Love Actually") is 10 hours long, on which I slept about 2 hours while the other 8 hours was devoted to watching "Bottle Shock" (which made me want to drink, where the hell was the bar and why am I not 21 yet?) and "City of Embers" (kind of lame).
10 hours later, arrived at London Heathrow where the local time is 7AM and I just technically spent the whole day in an airplane crammed in a small chair filled with crying babies (why he hell do people take kids on trips?). I then proceeded to cart two suitcases, a backpack filled with books (yes I am a geek), and my laptop bag through the airport (damn long terminals), to the London Express (a 15 minute train ride into the heart of London in which I lose my beautiful, white, down-filled puffer jacket), and roll it through Picadelly Station. A mocha latte at the station (everything is less sweet here, and that is why Europeans are so skinny), a conversation with a very nice American girl that I met on the train, it is almost 11AM. I hail a taxi and 10 pounds later, get to the hotel where I realize, fuck, I can't check in until 2PM. It's 10, I'm tired as hell and sore from head to toe (I have bruises on my legs to prove it) and all I want to do is sleep.
Luckily, I am able to leave my luggage at the storeroom in the hotel while I get to wander around London for 4 hours. Now, if you were to allow me to do this while I was awake and lucid, I would have probably appreciated it all the more. As it was, it was an American zombie walking around London, a shame since I spent 2 hours in the British Library where I saw original manuscripts of Shakespearean plays, Bibles, Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," and Beatles lyrics and all I could think about was a bed (and why I didn't remember to take my camera out of my backpack before I left the hotel). It would have been a geekfest had I not been exhausted and kind of brainnumb. Yet, it was wonderful all the same.
Suffice to say, I did not sleep until 12AM that night (only to be woken up at 7AM the next morning for a meeting at 8:30) and that was only after a guided boat ride on the Thames (to which I kind of dozed off), a pizza dinner (not hungry), and...(wait for it) an authentic English pub! At that moment, the entire group of tired, slightly cranky, UC abroad students decided to drown our exhaustion in booze (and in which I finally remember my camera).
And has it been worth all of this tiredness and trouble so far? Hell yeah, especially if you have beer and cider to help you through it.
This is what happens when you're tired and buzzed.
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