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Day 2. Again, commentarry in (parentheses).

9:00 am GMT (Hostel Lobby)

Finally all checked into the hostel. Have a bed with a curtain. Yay, privacy! Apparently my phone doesn’t want to work here, even though I have a supposedly “international phone rental” from verizon. It’s operating in “emergency only” mode. WTF is that? Found Core without it luckily. Now I’m just waiting for her to come down to the lobby to explore the city.

10:15 am GMT (Panzo, cafe)

Walked around town a bit, then headed over towards Westminster Abbey. (We took the tube over towards Westminter, and right as we emerged from the stairs we were greeted with Big Ben.) Decided on food before sightseeing, so we wandered off and found a small cafe. Looks like a chain sort of thing. Panzo- Monck Street 15

6:10 pm GMT (Bed at hostel)

Long day of walking all around London. (We decided against going into Westminster Abbey because it was like 15 pounds for admission. $30 is a bit much to see a church.) Went to the Tate Modern art museum. Not as amazing as I’d heard. Basically like all the other modern art museums I’ve been to, but it’s in London. There seemed to be a lot more non-english speakers than english speakers in there too. (There were a few neat minimalist and contemporary art exhibits, but I’ve come to realize that the genre “modern art” isn’t exactly my cup of tea.)

Just met two of the girls in my room before I took a short nap. Holly and Christie (le, ine?). Seem like nice girls, though I didn’t get much info from them. (Later i found out that one is a hairdresser and the other a student.)

I also discovered that there is only one outlet in the entire room for 12 people. There are some lamp/powerstrip things attached to the side of my bunk, but the cords for the bunks arent even plugged in, so there is no power. Other than that, not too many gripes about the hostel so far. Except that the layout is too fucking confusing. There are probably about 8 random doors between the lobby and my room and the hallways are really skinny. Combine that with crazy twisting halls and it will likely be a rough time getting back to my room after the pubs.

I’m really starting to miss the internet. Not being able to look up where things are or what there is to do is going to get really annoying. Also, I want to be able to update everyone with whats going on here and post the pictures I’ve taken without having to pay $2 for 30 min at a kiosk. Combine that with being in a completely foreign city in a completely foreign country and not knowing anyone, and I’m having a rather acute feeling of powerlessness.

(In my journal I recorded the pubs we visited and the beer I drank. I will omit that here and move those all to their own post.)

Reflections: The first full day in London was quite the experience. I started feeling a bit homesick, mainly because I was WAY outside my comfort zone. I’m usually a rather shy person and like keeping to myself, but doing that here would just doom the trip to suck. After the first day and a good night’s sleep, the homesickness began to subside, but a few more problems came up during the trip to not let that feeling of powerlessness and discomfort I mentioned completely subside.

Tuesday I found out that one of my favorite teachers from high school died while undergoing a routine heart procedure. It’s unfortunate because he was one of those teachers who actually cared about his students, even though it may not have always been apparent given the amount of homework he was known for. I don’t remember any specific incidents from being in his class, but I do recall that I enjoyed his class and he kept it entertaining (which was a hard thing to do for my in high school since I was one of those ‘smart’ kids who got bored with how slow many classes had to go to compensate for the rest of the students).
Thursday I drove back to Frankenmuth for the visitation. This was the 2nd time that I’ve actually seen a dead person in a casket in real life (the first being when I was 6), and the first time it was someone that I actually knew and cared about. Being confronted by his wasn’t particularly heart-wrenching or mind blowing or like the cliche stories that are told about being seeing death and being scared into actually taking action and living their life. I am sad for his passing, but what brought tears to my eyes was seeing all the people there whose lives he touched.
Being at the funeral home and seeing everyone that came to visit and having to stand in line for over an hour showed me just how many lives he’d actually touched through the course of his. Granted, he had the advantage of being a teacher, so there was a constant stream of people coming and going. Even so, he managed to have a personal effect on each and every person.
Seeing all those people made me realize that that is how I want my funeral to be. A line out the door of people whose lives I somehow touched. Granted, I have a loooong way to go as of right now, but this gives me a goal to strive for.

5:30 am CST

(at the airport) Got about 3 hours of sleep last night. Luckily I woke up on my own, since the alarm clock was absurdly quiet.

6:00 am CST

In the plane FINALLY. Taxiing out to the Runway. One stop in DC, then off to London. Fuck travelling, srsly.

8:50 am EST

Landed and quickly got off the plane. The plane to london had already started boarding, so I hurried over there and got on. I’ll be damned if I get stuck somewhere again. Now just waiting for takeoff. They have video screens in the headrests. About 7 hours until I’m in London, only 11 hours late.

7:10 pm GMT -1

Only an hour and a half left in the flight. I managed to sleep for what I think was about 3 hours, but I can never really tell on planes. The stewardess nearly missed me for lunch/dinner? I had to get out of my seat and track her down for my food. Am i seeing a theme for this trip? The map function on this video screen is pretty nifty. Not only does it show location, but also airspeed, altitude, ambient air temperature, and distance travelled/remaining, which is nice since my GPS doesn’t seem to get a signal in the plane.

9:30ish pm GMT

Landing now. Always fascinated by crushed pop bottles due to pressure changes.

(Reflections): Travel days are pretty much just lame. I went to sleep shortly after getting to the hostel. Nothing to see here folks, move along. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Journal Entry:  (clarification and missing info in parens)

May 5th 8:30 EST

(After finding out that my flight would be an hour and a half late leaving Lansing and I was basically guaranteed to miss my connecting flight)

Stuck here in the airport waiting for my flight to Chicago to spend the night there.  Get to leave for london at 6am and get there at 10pm.  One more advantage of carryon luggage.  Next time, get 2nd to last flight of the day.

10:15 CST

They put me up in the Crowne Plaza in Chicago.  Bellied up to the bar currently.  Hopefully this will help me get some sleep even though I have to be up at 3:30 to get back to the airport on time for my flight.  It’s a relatively nice hotel, though I’d prefer the 10 hours in London I’ll be missing.  As it is right now, I’ll get 4ish hours of sleep then back to the airport.  The hotel is not quite the adventure of sleeping in the airport, but it will definitely be more comfortable.

Of course I had mentioned today that my travels so far have gone off without a hitch.  I knew it was going to catch up with me.  At least i managed to get both a free meal and a free hotel from the airline for this.  Oh snap, just got some free pretzels to go with my beer.  If the beer weren’t $6 per glass I might be persuaded to get another. (little did I know that $6 per glass is about what i’d be paying the whole trip)

Pictures from Day 1 are here on Flickr

(Reflections):  I’m not one to believe in any sortr of cosmic connection between events, but were I a less skeptical person I might have though this were an omen for the rest of the trip.  It’s never good to start off on the wrong foot and it tends to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.  Overall, the first day was especially stressful since it was my first time out of the country alone and without a plan.  Looking back though, it was an amazing exercise of stepping outside my comfort zone.  The next step will have to be visiting somewhere with a language barrier.  Can’t say that I’m looking forward to that stress, but it’s not an experience I’m going to let pass me by.

After a few days of being home and going back to work, I’m starting to get back into the groove of things here.  Not in the “oh I’m getting stuck in a rut” kinda way, but more of a “mmm, the nice comforts of the places I’m used to” kinda way.  Sleeping in my own bed and seeing my usual surroundings are quite welcome after two weeks of being abroad.

Though the trip was awesome, I was quite a bit more stressed and on edge on the road than I usually am at home.  Not knowing where anything is or what I was going to spend my time doing added a bit of stress on top of the fact that I was already sleeping in a strange place and surrounded by no one I knew.  Nothing to the extent that it ruined the trip, but I sure am relieved to be home again.

Since being home I’ve been asked 23454983 times how the trip was.  At first I didn’t have anything other to say that “good” or “pretty fun” because I was still a zombie slave of jetlag.  After a day or so I was finally able to relay a bit more info on the trip, but still nothing very entertaining to those listening, I’m sure.  It’s taken a good 4 days for the real experience of the trip to congeal.  Up until now, the whole trip had been a bit of a blur.  Luckily throughout the time I was there I kept a relatively detailed journal about what I did while over there so I can look back and formulate stories to tell and recall details of places I visited.

Half of the reason why it has taken me so long to be able to tell coherent stories is probably because it has taken my brain that long to switch gears back to the routines of home and out of “holy crap I’m in a strange city and I have no idea what I’m doing” mode.  For the most part I took the lead as ‘tour guide’ for the both of us (my friend Courtney and I).  Though this was a bit frustrating at times, it was still enjoyable and I feel I know the city much better than had I taken the ‘back seat’ for exploring (if there is a back seat when it comes to walking upwards of 5 miles a day all over the streets of London).

Instead of posting a summary of the whole trip on my blog, my plan is to post my day-to-day entries from my travelling journal so that you guys can basically relive the trip through what I wrote down.  I haven’t decided yet if I want to post chunks of a few days at a time, or post them day-by-day.  Suggestions?  If you reeaaallly want a summary, come see me in person, I can give you the gist of it in anywhere for 2 minutes to 45.

For now I’m going to head off and start typing all these pages in, expect to see the beginning of the journal entries in a few days. (Though given that the weekend is fast approaching and there is a bachelor party to attend ‘a few days’ will most likely mean Tuesday.)

So I made it back to the states alive and intact. Just a quick update here as I’m planning on chunking y written journal from the trip into entries for the blog. They’ll be both a glimpse of what happened day to day along with review and commentary by me looking back on the trip.

London was hella expensive as expected. Though I did not expect having my laptop stolen or missing a connecting flight and having the start of the trip delayed by 11 hours. Luckily those were basically the worst points of the trip, everything else was pretty amazing. Work starts again tomorrow, and I have a haircut to get to and cuban cigars to smoke between now and then. So I’m off to get those things done.

All-in-all, it looks like the initial cost of this trip is going to be roughly $1100. 600 for the plane tickets, 275 for 7 nights in a london hostel, $200 for 5 nights in a dublin hostel. Unfortunately it’s looking like food for the trip may end up costing more than housing… wtf? A whole week of eating out in one of the most expensive cities in the world. On top of that, the dollar is just getting weaker and weaker.

That reminds me…. i need to actually go buy some money soon.

After a bit of research I figured out how to use an SD card with my tomtom. This means that I can actually fit maps of the UK and ireland on it for my trip. The only question left is do i actually want to take it with me. I am aiming to fit everything into one backpack and messenger bag for the whole trip. This is all inclusive. Clothes, gadgets, snacks, everything.

The gadget list is looking to consist of only my GPS, Camera, Ipod, and my travel phone. Quite a lot lighter than any of my other trips inside the US.

Overall, I’ve managed to pack everything into my backpack an messenger bag.  The list includes:

3 Pair of pants

3 T-Shirts

2 Long sleeve thermals

2 Pair of Magic Underwear (moisture wicking, odor and bacteria resistant, super comfortable, dries in 1-2 hours)

3 Pair of socks

1 Marmot Precip jacket (3 ounces, waterproof, fold up to fit in a pocket)

1 pair of sandals

2 Books

Gadgets listed above + power chargers

Anything else I might need can easily be bought while there.  This includes toothbrush, soap, etc.

My flight leaves tomorrow at 8:30 from Lansing.  From there its off to Chicago to get on a 777 for the 8 hours trip to Heathrow.  I have a little over 28 hours left in Michigan.  Now time to find something to do to pass the time.  GTA4 is looking like it should do a good job at that.