June 27

We woke up around noon (or “mid-day” as they call it here) today from our camp in Regents Park. We didn’t get any rain although the forecast called for it. I got cold during the night because all our warm clothes were still wet from the night before, but we made it through alright. I didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight; partly because of our four hour “nap” in the afternoon and partly because I just couldn’t get comfortable. However, when we picked up camp to get away from the long grass and bugs, I realized that I had been sleeping on a big fallen tree branch, so that may have led to some of the discomfort. It didn’t help that I had spiders and bugs crawling and flying around my head all night as well. I woke up twice with a spider crawling around on or near my face. When I packed my bag I had to pick off sixteen spiders from it. All and all though, I feel pretty refreshed.

We now have all our clothes lying out in the lawn to dry. I also did some laundry in the public bathroom today so those are lying out to dry as well. We have decided that our rainstorm the other night was actually a blessing in disguise. It was miserable for about an hour, but we did get a free shower, a free clothes wash, and a valuable lesson in choosing places to sleep outside. It has been four days now without a shower for me and five for Ben. The rain actually really helped us to rinse off and stay somewhat bearable, especially for Ben who failed to bring any soap or deodorant along.

We are probably just going to chill in the park for the rest of the day until nightfall. Ben wants to go to the club with these girls he’s been talking to online. I’m not sure how that will work out with our backpacks and since we don’t have a way of getting a hold of them. I am now going to take the opportunity to watch some British football, some rugby, and some cricket.

June 28
Well we sat down to watch an intense game of what we thought was rugby, but it turned out to be Australian football as we found out from our roommates here at the hostel. Soon after the game ended, it began to sprinkle. As we looked toward the sky, we saw that the weather did not look promising. Remembering our lesson from two nights earlier, we ran for cover in the nearest pavilion. There we met a nice lady with a Russian accent who gave us the advice to go sleep in the train station if the ground gets too wet. It hadn’t been raining too badly yet, but we could see another big storm coming. Ben claimed that we had twenty minutes before it hit us. I thought we probably had only a couple minutes, but we decided to head towards the bigger pavilion in the center of the park. We made about 100 yards of progress before it started pouring on us. We quickly sprinted for the big pavilion with our packs feeling heavier than ever. By the time we got there, we were soaked and my blanket (strapped to the outside of my pack) didn’t fare too much better. We packed into the pavilion with another dozen or so people just before it started to hail. We talked for awhile to a Brit who had just moved back from New York. She didn’t seem to believe us that we were planning on sleeping in the park that night. After she left, we talked to a group who had just been finishing up there picnic in the park. One was a school teacher, another a doctor, and I’m not sure about the other two. They all had different accents though. One was from Ireland, another from Turkey, and another grew up in Britain, but both his parents were from the States. The Turkish lady was really nice; she insisted that we try all of her Turkish dishes that she had made. They were really good actually.

After the rain stopped and the group went home, we made our way back to the internet café. We got there around 8:00 pm but they were already closed. Everything closes early around here. Even the bars close at 11:30 pm according to the guys in the park. Anyway, we decided to head back to the train station to see if we could spend the night there. Once we got there, we realized that it was much too noisy and there were no benches to sleep on, so we went outside in search of a bed. Since it had rained so hard a couple hours earlier, anything grassy was still soaked, so we ended up finding concrete steps about a block away from station. The wind was blowing and the steps were cold, so I never really did any serious sleeping. All we had to do was make it until 4:30 am so we could get our bus passes for the day and ride out to our hostel. Once 4:30 am finally came around, we got on our bus and headed toward the hostel. Unfortunately, we rode about an hour to the end of the line before we realized that we had taken the wrong bus. We rode all the way back and got on the correct bus this time. After another hour-long trip (where my head kept crashing against the window every time I dozed off to sleep) we finally arrived at our hostel. Our watch had broken the day earlier so we didn’t even know what time it was. We knew check in was at 11:00 am but had to ask a guy standing in the hostel door what the current time was. He told us, but apparently we heard him wrong through his heavy accent. We thought it was 10:30 am, but it was actually only 9:30 am. We waited for a half hour to get in and all we could think about was crashing in our beds and sleeping the day away. Then, at what we thought was 11:00 am, we went into the hostel and they informed us that it was only 10:00 am and check in wasn’t until noon! The day just could not feel any longer. At that point, I had been up for twenty-four hours straight (minus the split seconds before my head hit bus window). So we walked around the neighborhood for a little while until we finally were able to check in. We immediately went up to our beds and crashed. We slept for about five hours before I woke up and convinced Ben that we needed to get up and do something with the day. While waiting for Ben to get out of bed, I took my first shower since our second day in Paris; it was quite refreshing to say the least. Ben was complaining that I made him get out of bed, and that his feet hurt, and that his calves were sore among other things. I guess I always thought I would be the one complaining about all that stuff. Anyway, Ben would later be grateful that I got him up; we ended up having a pretty fun night.

Our hostel is also a bar and a nightclub downstairs. We went to go check everything out but we never even made it inside the door. We started talking to a group of people outside on the sidewalk and we pretty much stayed there all night. We are finding that the people at this hostel are quite interesting, and everybody is really open and trusting., In my room, I have a girl from Melbourn, Australia in the bunk above me and a few other girls from all over Europe. Ben has got a group from Australia and New Zealand living in his dorm. Oh, and I actually mean “living”. They came there six months ago in search of a change in life and have been renting the beds by the week ever since. I guess tonight is the last night here for one of the guys. There is also a girl from California living in there. It is fun to talk to all of them to try to get their perspective on America and to make fun of their accents. Realistically though, we get made fun of more because we talk slower that any other accent. Well I am headed to bed for the night. Tomorrow we are going downtown to check out all the sites on our last full day in London. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to accomplish the “must-sees”.