Travels Home ⇒ Intro → London→Dubrovnik → Rome →Venice→ Brussels → LONDON

London: Part 2

Cliffs Notes Version:
Back in London again for one night before our flight back. We were going toget some sleep, but fear of our hotel room made it a night of seeing late nightLondon

Night 1

We got into London fairly late in the evening, probably around ten p.m. Our plan was to just check into the hotel, repack, and get a good night sleep before our early morning flight.We went to the hotel and immediately our spidey sense tingled as the place smelled like a mixture of wet socks and curry. We went up to our room and discovered visibly stained comforters, carpets that looked like a few double homicides had been carried out on them, a toilet without a toilet seat, and a shower that had black mold visibly growing throughout. It was enough that I actually went down and requested another room.

Shower in our hotel
As some background information, I have never requested another room or complained about any sleeping arrangement I've ever had. In high school, I slept in my parents' basement and routinely used a carbon monoxide detector as my alarm clock. In college, while pledging a fraternity for a weekend I slept in a bathroom covered in ketchup and mustard while bad 80s remixes piped through speakers above me. A few years ago, our ground floor apartment was flooded with sewage and we didn't move out until mushrooms started growing on the walls. I'm not too much of a prima donna, but this was the breaking point. The other room they gave us was a little better but by this point neither Colleen and I were comfortable sleeping in this place. We made the joint decision to just walk around London until the wee hours of the morning and then just go to the airport and try to get some sleep on the flight.

This strange development actually led to some of the more enjoyable moments of the trip. At around midnight, we started walking around the city and since many of the sights in London are outdoors we could experience them with little or no crowds. We hadn't really ate much so we went and bought a couple sandwhiches and walked over to Buckingham Palace and had a very late dinner on the steps of the statue by the gates. We then walked along the river, past Parliament and past the London Eye to over by London Bridge. With our nice late night/early morning walk around London, we made peace with the fact that we would have to be going back to the real world soon enough and also tired ourselves out to the point where we effectively tranquilized ourselves to where the plane ride back would be quick and painless ... which it was ... except for the Hugh Grant movie I watched (again) when I woke up in the middle of the flight.

Travels Home ⇒ Intro → London→Dubrovnik → Rome →Venice→ Brussels → LONDON