Travel Diary

January 2, 2004

At 6:30am, I was done sleeping. I dressed to go outside and try and get some pictures of early morning Paris. Alan wasn't tired, so he tagged along. The streets were still dark and the weather was wet and cold. Not having to fight any crowds made getting around a lot easier. I was hoping to get some good sunrise photos so we ascended up to Sacre Coeur Church. This time, the long stairwell was completely empty. The church was open, so we took a brief tour around the inside. No choirs were singing this time--not at 7:30 in the morning. Back outside again, I realized that the sun would be a while in rising, and the dull gray sky would once again restrict any sunlight from making an appearance. Okay, no Paris sunrise photos for me. We returned to the hostel and packed. There was still some time before we had to be at the train station, so we ate breakfast at a little nearby café. I had coffee and an omelet with ham. One thing about food in France is that if the word is French (e.g. omelet), they probably know how to make it.

When breakfast was over, we went to the train station. I got to tote my luggage along again, but the walk wasn't very long. At the train station, we nearly missed our train since we didn't fully understand how to check in. However, I think I finally understand the process now. So my third time to Paris really should be a charm. We caught our train having only three minutes to spare. On board, I took full advantage of my two reserved seats and once again enjoyed the extra room. And being a little thirsty, I figured it was as good time as any for my large Guinness beer. I set the beer on the tray table in front of me and gently pulled the little tab...

WHOOSH! Beer all over! Somehow all my bumpy walking and running had managed to shake up my beer when it was in my backpack. Nevertheless, I remained calm. I didn't even raise an eyebrow. My demeanor simply stated that this was all par for the course and a small explosion of beer could easily be remedied by...uh...well, I didn't have anything to clean up the mess with. My backpack didn't even contain tissues. My only resort was to use some notebook paper. It wasn't quite as effective as Bounty and I doubt you'll see any commercials any time soon denoting notebook paper as the "quicker beer picker upper," but it somehow did the job.

Our Final Home

Once we entered London, we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus station. After ascending the steps outside, it was a very short walk to our hostel, Piccadilly Backpackers Hostel. We weren't backpackers though. In fact, most of the people in there didn't appear to be backpackers. I also wondered why backpackers needed a hostel anyway. Isn't backpacking supposed to be an outdoor activity? But the price was right. And for only $18 a night, they could have called it the Piccadilly Synchronized Swimmers hostel. As long I didn't have to wear Speedos, I would have no problem with that. We checked in at 1pm, but could not enter the room until 2pm. So we waited in the common room until the scheduled time. Now, the common room was fun. It was open 24/7 and had a nice TV with a movie almost always playing. Another adjacent small room held six computers connected to the Internet. For one pound per hour, residents could use the Internet and send mail to friends telling them how wonderful the weather in London was. Vending machines offered sodas and snacks for a decent price. Another machine offered coffee and cocoa, but it was out of order the entire time we were there. It just seemed to tease me by saying, "You could be drinking hot cocoa, but NOPE, I'm broken!"

Once the hour had passed, we went to our room on Floor 6. It was a 6-person room. Three bunk beds were situated in there. Only three of us were booked, so we expected some strangers to join us. Not bothering to look at the reservation paper, we just grabbed whatever bunks seemed amiable. I got the bunk close to the window-and the radiator! With our luggage stowed, I went back down to Floor 4 to leave a note for the girls. Around 4pm, Steph and Amanda showed up, so I began hanging out with them. Alan and Irena remained sleeping back in the room. Later, Gardner and Heather arrived. Now, the whole gang was here. We all got ready and went out on the town, well, all except Alan and Irena, who chose to remain back at the hostel and sleep, since Irena was still a little sick.

In the City

Our mission was simple--eat dinner at Wagamama's. The mission quickly came to an unsuccessful halt when we discovered that the restaurant was closed for several days around the holidays. That was sort of an interesting tradition: pick the time of year where business would be busiest and then shut down the place during that period of potentially extra revenue. But who am I to critique? I never went to business school. Our second choice was to eat Indian food. We found a great place. Following tradition, I started off with a beer. Hey, if I'm going to invoke chaos on my taste buds, I need to dull the pain somehow. As usual, I ordered my spicy "chicken vindaloo." True to fashion, it tasted hot enough to melt led. With nan and special fried rice, it turned out to be a great meal for me. The others seemed to enjoy their meals as well. After dinner, our next task was to see a show. Randomly walking all over the city, we ended up not being able to find any good price on last minute tickets. Our final idea was to see The Woman in Black. Never mind the fact that I'd now seen the show four times. What was one more time? But arriving there too late, the show had no seats left. So over to the Cambridge, we went.

The Cambridge is a great little pub and we spent time there during the previous year. The upstairs area is usually empty and allows for relaxed chatting and beer drinking. Happily, it proved to be just the same this time. Keeping the pints moving, we had a jovial time once again sharing stories and telling tales. During a bar run, Gardner was all too happy to point out that the girls seated next to us had been continually glancing my direction. Flattering as this was, starting up bar conversations was never my strong point. The girls were cute, but hey, I was already seated with three lovely ladies. What was I going to do with three more? Still, the whole sordid event kept everyone highly entertained until we exited the pub.

It was now time to visit the Sports Café. The great thing about it was its location. It was only a short walk from our hostel. During last year's trip, I always had to depart early to catch the tube back home since I had lived seven miles away from the center of town and couldn't exactly jog home at. Yes, the buses did run all night, but only once every hour. And if you needed to transfer, or even worse--if you got on the wrong bus, you'd probably be home sometime after breakfast. But now things were great. I could stay out as late as I wanted to. And I wouldn't have to worry about waking up any home stay folks or having them whisper, "Oh no. He's drunk again. Do you think he's an alcoholic, Martin?"

The club was somewhat deserted. And it was a Friday night. The place got busier after some time and we danced until about 12:30am. Most of us headed home while Amanda stayed to enjoy the nightlife a little more. Back at the hostel, we used the Internet to book my bus ticket to Oxford. The others had already ordered tickets and I wanted to join them. Being done with that, I headed to bed. Others were already asleep in our room, but I don't think I woke anyone. I made a beeline for the bed, climbed under the covers and went immediately to sleep.

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