Arriving in London

London was quite the different experience for me.  After the feeling of relative safety in Japan and Scotland, I was unprepared for the harshness of London.  To be fair, when we were in/around Parliament Square, and even out and about on the Underground, it was fine, but our hotel happened to be on the edge of the seedy part of London, and my introduction was not the best.

Emily booked the hotel room off a website that had given her decent (yet nicely priced) rooms previously.  Neither she nor I were picky because we didn't intend to spend much time in the room--it was essentially a place to sleep and store our luggage.  She picked the hotel because it said that it was close to the Underground where we would be able to get around London without a problem. 

Well...it wasn't quite that simple.  To get to the hotel initially, we took a cab.  Even the cab driver didn't know the address and had to put it into his GPS.  The GPS couldn't find it, but the driver started heading toward the zip code until finally the GPS picked it up. 

The hotel was practically hidden in a building with other businesses.  The door was locked after normal business hours (we had arrived when it was open), and no elevator, so we hauled our luggage up the very narrow stairway.  Even with the obviously low quality of the hotel, it wasn't until we got into our room that I started to get worried about the sanitation of the place.  I ended up sleeping on top of the top sheet with a towel as a pillow.  My bedspread had a stain, the mattress could be seen under the sheet (no mattress protector there), and the mattress itself had a blood stain on it.   Ewwww....  Okay, so maybe I sound very much like an entitled American, but gross!

Once we dropped off our luggage, we hustled out to catch the Underground so that we could meet up with one of Emily's fellow ALT's from Japan, who happens to live near London.  That proved to be another adventure.

Our hotel room

We made it to the station on the map, but either it was an old station or it wasn't yet in operation (my guess is the second option--that it was under construction and not yet open), because nobody was there, and looking on the Underground maps, it wasn't even listed.  So, based on our limited knowledge of the area, we took a guess on which way to go to catch the next nearest station (or even a bus terminal to find out exactly where we were), and we started walking...and walking (we went in the right direction for the city, but the wrong way to reach the Underground).  We walked through some very seedy areas and I was truly frightened.  For the first time during the whole trip, I suddenly realized just how far I was from home and everything familiar.  It was not a good feeling.  There was one section where there was an overpass for the cars, which led us under for walking.  It reeked of stale beer and urine, there was graffiti everywhere, and through the slats, it looked like an abandoned parking lot.  Perfect for squatters and druggies.  Oh yeah, I was scared--not to mention it was starting to get toward evening time and I was worried about having to go through all that on the way back to the hotel.  I wish now I had taken a picture of the area--but I was too focused on getting through it. 

My bed

We finally found an entrance to the Underground and made our way to Charing Cross Station where we met Nina.  Once on the Underground, I finally started to unwind.  Even Emily had been nervous and we talked about getting a cab (and another hotel) to get back.  However, when we talked with one of the Underground workers, they pointed out the nearest station to our hotel, which was't anywhere near the area we had walked (the opposite direction even), so we opted to try it out.  It was a 20 minute walk from the station to our hotel, but it was amazingly enough such a different area that did not feel at all threatening.  It is so crazy how quickly an area can turn from good to bad.  S-C-A-R-Y.

Needless to say, my introduction to London wasn't the best, which probably colored my experience somewhat. That aside, we really did have a wonderful time and even had some once-in-a-lifetime experiences!

Nina and Emily