Okay, so I got out of class on Thursday at 11:30 and ate a hurried breakfast followed by a quick taxi ride to the train station. The Grantham train station is this cute little 2 platform station with a small station house with a little café type area for people to get a bite to eat and sit in the warmth. We got there about 45 minutes before our train was schedule to arrive so we sat in the café and studied for Shakespeare because most of us have a 15 to 20 minute presentation in that class this coming week. YIKES!!! I am doing a presentation with 2 other theatre students about film and Shakespeare in the context of Romeo and Juliet and how Shakespeare translates from words on a page to images on a screen. Anyway, the train arrived on time and we boarded heading south towards London. I wasn't sitting with any of my friends, but I was sitting next to two lovely elderly English gentlemen. There was an English woman sitting across the aisle from me who was heading into London because her daughter and been "knocked down" by a car. Despite the tragedy she was living through she was very upbeat and asked if she and I knew each other and when I told her that was impossible because I just arrived in the country a few days previous, she told me that I had a lovely face. So anyway, the train ride was pretty short, about an hour, and in now time we pulled into Kings Cross Station. We all got off and were shunted off the platform like confused fish. We figured out we had to get Oyster cards and so that took awhile, but after that we hopped on the Tube (Picadilly line) and headed towards our hostel. London's underground is pretty much identical to New York's except cleaner and less dodgy, so I won't describe it in much detail. We got off in South Kensington and walked a couple blocks to our hostel. Our hostel is a youth hostel with alot of character. Most of the employees are from Australia and New Zealand, but their cliental consists of people from all over the world. Most of us were staying in different rooms, but 4 of the 11 were in the same room so that was comforting. When we got there on Thursday we had three other roommates. Two guys in their early to mid twenties from Australia and a English girl from Devon who is up in London for 6 weeks doing an internship. I think that there are several people at the hostel who stay there for extended period of time/ maybe live there.
Anyway, we dropped our stuff off and decided to take a walk because the rest of our group (4 other people) wouldn't arrive until 6pm. We walked down Cromwell street that runs right in front of our hostel towards the Natural History Museum and the V & A museum. The Natural History Museum is gorgeous! We didn't go inside, but the outside of it is exquisite, just wait for the pictures. The V & A (Victoria and Albert) Museum is also pretty stunning. We didn't go in there either, but instead walked up Exhibition Road towards Hyde Park. We walked past the Imperial University London, yeah I know it's a weird name, and when we got to Hyde Park we headed west. We came upon the Royal Albert monument right across the street from the Royal Albert Hall, which is a multi-purpose performance space. The monument is incredibly ornate and shows Albert as a golden ruler surrounded by the people of the world and the sects of his own society such as the merchants, agriculturalists, scholars etc. We walked over to the Royal Albert Hall and discovered that Quidam, the Cirque de Soleil show was currently playing and we could get tickets to the matinee for the next day for only 17 pounds. We all decided we wanted to go see it and so we got tickets. Afterwards we walked back to our hostel via another street... not sure of the name, but it was a street lined with embassies for other countries, most outside of Europe. We hung out at the hostel until the rest of our friends arrived and then we headed off in search of dinner because were all starving by this point. We found a pub, The Earls Court Tavern, and had lovely dinner there. After dinner we walked back to the hostel and decided that we wanted to go to SoHo later that night so we jumped on the tube up to Tottenham Court Road (Harry Potter reference: Book 7). I don't really know how to describe SoHo to you because it's not like anything I've ever experienced. It's a combination of clubs and pubs and patisseries and shady looking places and beautiful architecture and people hassling you to go to clubs and people EVERYWHERE! It made me wonder where the youth of London goes to party/ hangout because most of the people we saw there were mid to late twenties some pushing the 30 year mark. We went to a couple different pubs/ clubs but for the most point it was pretty disappointing. As you will learn on day 3 I have real doubts about the pub scene in London, for various reasons. Anyway some of us decided to leave SoHo and go back home to the hostel. A few stayed to hit up a few more places but the majority of us went home. When we got back to the hostel we talked to one of our roommates, Sam from Melborne, Australia for a little while before we called it a night.
And so ends my first day in London.
P.S. The hostel beds were amazing!!!
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