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DAY TWELVE – Pretty Shitty

My train to England wasn’t until like 4 in the afternoon (it was also like 200 euros. Fuck the Eurostar), so today I was so looking forward to sleeping until 1pm. Then around 10:04 I realized I had to check out before 10. Oops. Cue the frantic clean up of all my shit around my bed and, around 10:20, I start walking to the train station (sans shower and still probably smelling like booze). So now it’s 11:00am and my train doesn’t leave for another 5 hours and what the fuck do I do until then? Answer: sit on the train station floor and lament my hangover until I die.

Eventually 3:00 comes, so I start my journey through security, which both began and ended shit. First, I had to throw away my multitool cause you can’t take knives on the train, and then the border patrol dude grills me for 20 minutes cause I don’t have a plane ticket out of the UK yet. I guess he was trying to catch me doing some illegal shit, but he eventually stares into my soul and says “You do realize that you are prohibited from working or studying in the UK without a visa, correct? And you will be staying in the country for 5 days? I’m going to make a note of that, and if you stay any longer, when you leave, they will know. Move along.”

So that thoroughly frazzled the shit out of me. I got on the train and, 1.5 hours later, was in London. Being a now-pro at subways, I found my hostel no problem. Also, London is pretty nice. Much better than Manchester. Fuck Manchester. At my hostel there were a couple cool businessmen who I guess hate spending money, cause they’re doing work in London for the week and didn’t get a real hotel. That sounds pretty shit to me, but whatever, save that 60 quid I guess. Talked to them for a bit, then I slept. Around 3am some asshole comes into the room with his lady and they take the bunk atop mine, and just start going at it. So I passive-aggressively ask them “you guys fuckin’ right now?” and the dude just sticks his head over the side of the bunk and fuckin’ stares at me. That was weird, but they stopped bumpin’ uglies, so I guess I won.

Random thought: I was looking forward to being in a place where I knew the language for real, but when I got to London, it weren’t no big thang, man. Guess I had gotten okay enough at bullshitting my way through a language barrier that it wasn’t a big deal anymore, so that’s neat, ain’t it?

DAY THIRTEEN – Serial Killers and Dildos

What a title that is, huh?

Looking at Google Maps the night prior, I saw that the Jack the Ripper Museum was 150 feet away from my hostel, so I kinda had to go to it. Pretty not that bad, more of an experience than a museum though. They had different slices of life on the different floors that related to Jack’s murders and such. One was a recreated crime scene, another was what his room possibly looked like, the third was a recreated police station of the time, the top floor was what one of the girls’ room probably looked like, and the basement was what a morgue would have looked like back in 1888. Pretty well done, and they had the actual police implements from the dude who found the 4th girl.

A couple hours later there was a Jack the Ripper walking tour of the city, so I did that and ended up being the only person on the tour. Nice. The guy had a lot of interesting info to share, and goddamn did he talk in circles and forever. But I learned about how the City of London is a separate entity from Greater London, I visited the actual crime scene where one of the girls was found, and I walked along the slummy streets that Jack probably lived in. Let me tell you, they are still as slummy as ever. Homeless people, literal needles on the ground, drug deals out in the open, woof. Some things never change.

After the tour I went and saw Beauty and the Beast cause I dunno I was on a mission to see that movie before I left Europe for some stupid reason. It was okay, 7/10. But the theatre was so nice! Comfy chairs and pillows and blankets and booze, oh man, the Picture Show ain’t got nothing on this bitch. But, the best news is that no one boned on top of me when I went to sleep that night. Success!

Oh, and I also saw the famous LONDON DILDO.

Bigger than I thought it would be.

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DAY TEN – Alone Again

Today started off with waking up at 4:30am to see Brittany off back to the US. Then I slept some more until I had to check out. At that point I walked a couple miles to GENERATOR PARIS, a new hostel ’cause the old one didn’t have any more rooms for a new reservation. Generator was pretty nice, really similar to a hotel, just 8 people to a room. Whilst waiting for my check in time, I spent a good hour repairing my shoe, which had a seam bust a few days prior. Many miles later, it has held so far. We’ll see if it explodes in the future.

Once settled into my new bed, I walked back to Notre Dame to wait in line for an hour to gain access to the top of the towers. Like 800 spiral steps later, I was overlooking Paris from a bell tower hundreds of years old. Complete with a robust wind and the (rather mysterious) voice of a lone opera singer, being on top of that huge church was mighty impressive. Once back on the ground floor, I walked out of Notre Dame and immediately saw the source of the opera: unaccompanied, there was a chick standing on a street corner singing her heart out, and man did she have some pipes. After listening to her for a bit, I left the square and got some expensive as fuck but so worth it dinner at a restaurant (as a side note, it seems that all the whiskey in Paris tastes like frogs and cheese. Who knew?), and then walked back to my hostel.

Back in my bed, my thinks of the past few days culminated and, spoiler alert, I decided to cut my trip short and take a flight out of London back to the US. There are a lot of “hardships” that can be said about travelling Europe alone, such as the stress of planning your transportation and lodging on the go, trying to navigate a new city where you don’t speak the language, or the loneliness that often accompanies solo travellers. None of these impacted me in such a way as to make me decide to fly back to the US, though. I just got bored.

Yeah, that makes me sound like an asshole, but after a couple weeks overseas, another museum is just another museum, every building you pass is more than two centuries old (yawn), and drunken nights of debauchery can only keep the fun alive for so long. Coupled with no one to talk to about such things, I’d personally rather watch some YouTube videos and get some McDonald’s with my bros back in AZ.

Of course travel is fantastic and unique and there’s so much to see, but it’s the context that matters, and the context that I like is of the friendly variety. I know I could continue on my travels for as long as my money lasts, and probably experience a fantastic journey, but I also know that I’d simply enjoy my time more if I was around the people that I know and like to talk to. And unfortunately, that Nigerian dude I met and had light small talk with doesn’t make the cut. In a sentence, I’d rather have a conversation with Hector about the really nice beard that guy at Harkin’s had than talk to myself about how important and grand the Vatican is.

I’m sure I’ll come back to Yurop some day and check out the stuff I missed out on this time, I just need to get some company with me first.
Oh, and I also passed a dude playing an accordion today, so I think I can safely say that this is indeed fucking France.

DAY ELEVEN – Party Hardy

Ooh boy. This was a time and a half. For the first 75% of the day I just walked to the train station to get my ticket to London. On my way back I grabbed some food and then decided to catch a movie; unfortunately, Beauty and the Beast wasn’t out in Paris yet, so I went and saw Silence. Holy fuck is that a heavy movie. If you aren’t aware, like I wasn’t, it’s about two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan in the 17th century looking for their missing mentor. I had no idea what the movie was about when I sat down, and damn. Big questions. 9/10 would recommend.

Later that night I was invited by my hostel-mates to get some foods and drinks, so the 7 of us went and got some food and drinks. First thing’s first, goddamn, Americans are loud. There were four of us in the group, and the other three would not stop yelling at seven billion decibels in the restaurant. That’s not to say Americans aren’t the only loud ones, but I think we take the crown on that front. Back at the hostel we pre-gamed a bit, and there was this one American chick who had like 4 shots before we even left the room, and that’s the point where I decided this was gonna be a good night. We took the metro to Bastille and hit the clubs there, and I swear, clubs are the worst fucking thing. Some dude came up and literally shoved one of the girls into a wall and started grinding on her and she was like NOPE and we had to tear the guy off of her. One of the other dudes had to pretend to be her boyfriend to get him to finally fuck off. Later, three guys were following us down the street like a bunch of weirdos and we ended up ducking into a club to lose them. Fuck that. Dancing is cool and all, but tbh not the biggest fan, fam.

Many debaucheries later, we got back to the hostel, and then there was some dumbshit drama between this Czech dude and the crazy chick who took a million shots. Guess they both have significant others, but that flies out the window when they meet up during their travels. Okay. Eventually we all went to sleep, still drunk of course, but let me tell you, all those people were pretty damn neat, would party with again. As one of them put it before I crashed “I’m so glad our entire room fucks with each other. Ya’ll are good hostel-mates.”

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DAY NINE – Hot Shit, France

After a fantastic four hours of sleep, Brittany and I got up at like fuckin’ 5 to catch a train to a plane to a PARIS.

Oh fuck now I gotta speak not-English.

On our way to the city center by bus, we passed a literal homeless village on the side of a highway. Like the homeless had built crude shacks out of scrap wood and tarps and old shower doors. It was fairly large, too. Crazy to think that people lived there. It’s not all fun and glitter in Paris, folks.

We took the metro to the hostel no problem, except that the metro fucking sucks. Not that it’s a bad subway system, I’m just from bum-fuck-nowhere and can’t deal with how shit it is. Fuck that place.

We couldn’t check in until 2, so we got lunch at this bistro with this character of a server. Oh man, he was a laugh and a half, shouting everywhere and speaking in broken English, awesome. Bombastic folk, these French. Somehow I got a salad, which if you know me, I don’t fucking get salads. But my shit French failed me, and you know what? That salad was mother lovin’ fire. Guess I’m getting cultured or something. Or I was really hungry. ¿Porque no los dos?

Also, yay my shit French is coming in handy. I can kind of talk to people.

Kind of.

When we checked in, Brittany showed me a news bulletin that just got bulleted, and it seems a mail bomb had exploded somewhere around Paris. Awesome, terrorism. Just what I wanted. But since I can’t give any shits whatsoever, I went to bed at like 3pm cause I was double tired, and ended up sleeping until 8am the next morning, but not before a total of two loudass people derped around our room for like forever and a half. Come on man, it’s 10pm, don’t turn the fucking light on. And you, lady, fuck off with the noisy plastic bags. Fuck.

DAY TEN – What a Dame
Update: the metro still sucks ball.

Today our quest was to do Paris in a day: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre. We took the metro (ugh) to the Eiffel Tower, and immediately some chick tried to scam us by having us sign a petition we couldn’t read cause it was in French, but fuck her, we were wise to her shit. The tower was pretty nice, a lot more ornate than I thought it was, also bigger. We didn’t spend too long there, though, as we had bigger fish to fry.

After a two mile walk, we had reached Notre Dame, and oh my gods I love that building so many look at the flying buttresses and the carvings and the doors are even noteworthy unnnffffff. Seriously, it’s such an impressive piece of architecture, and so imposing, too. Its monumental size is incredible.

Like, that is one girthy church.

There were armed guards with big ol’ guns patrolling the place, and they were imposing, too. After we waited in line for maybe 20 minutes we were admitted into the hallowed walls. The stained glass windows are super beautiful and there was some kind of a sermon or something going on while we walked around the church, so we sat and listened to the chorus of people sing hymns for a bit, and that was amazing cause, even though there were only maybe 20 or 30 people singing, it filled the space in the way only a giant building with massive reverb can.

After getting our fill of art in the form of buildings, we started off to get our fill of art in the form of paintings and sculptures at the Louvre, but not before we grabbed a bite to eat. Guys, French food is so good. It doesn’t matter what kind of food it is, they do it right. I’m going to say it again, French food is double-plus good. Go to France and just spend 500 bucks on food for a week, it’s so worth it.  In particular, we got a crème brûlée after lunch, and it was likely the best dessert I’ve ever had. Oh man you guys don’t fucking know. Brittany does. Fuck it was so good.

We arrived at the Louvre around 2pm, and, although it was a Friday afternoon, it wasn’t that busy, compared to the mobs of people that I assume usually inhabit the museum. Off season is best season for museums and such. The lines to get in weren’t bad at all, and most rooms had only a few people in them as we traversed the huge palace-turned-gallery. One painting we saw was called ‘Pandemonium’ by John Martin, and you need to google that shit. How did something that metal come out of 1841? As we wandered along I was most impressed by the huge 80 foot by 60 foot paintings that took up an entire wall. There were quite a few of them throughout, and every time I was like ‘Damn, now that’s a fuckin’ painting.’

What I was not impressed with was the Mona Lisa. There were like a billion people around it, and even if there weren’t, you couldn’t get within 15 feet of the thing to actually examine it cause it was roped off. It was wholly underwhelming and I don’t see why people make such a fuss over it. As a side note, in almost all of these museums, you can take pictures of whatever you want. Didn’t expect that. I guess they figure there’s already a billion pictures on the internet, so they’ve laxened (fuck you that’s a word now) the rules. There are still some exceptions, though; the Crown Jewels, for instance. In other news, I’m developing a taste for scotch and my hair, in this humid environment, is better than ever.

Tomorrow, Brittany leaves and I do some other things, probably. Get ready.

P.S. Shout-out to Emily Luna of being all that, and a bag of chips.

DAY SEVEN – What a Journey

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Man, I’m bad at this whole updating daily thing, aren’t I?

Goddamn I leave in 60 minutes.

Here’s a song that fits the occasion. Also it’s great.

Shoutout to Leticia for showing me this good shit.

Hot shit tomorrow I get to leave. Surprisingly, only vaguely excited, probably ’cause it doesn’t seem real yet. Regardless, low expectations are best expectations.

See you guys when I’m not an American anymore.

(six days)