Last year in September I visited London for 2 Muse concerts. And now I finally wrote posts about it \o/! Obligatory better late than never comment.


Bah, there's always something you forgot. When we were on our way to the train station (where our coach to Berlin departed from) I remembered that I forgot to pack 45.36 Pounds and it was too late to go back. D'oh, 1/5 of my money! I forgot it because it wasn't in the same place as the rest of the money. It was in a different place because the 45.36 were left over from the Edinburgh vacation in May, the 200 Pounds were in an envelope from the bank. Oh well, could have been worse, I could have forgotten to pack the 200 instead.





At the airport I bought some water and when the cashier saw my MK Ultra shirt he said "I like Muse too". That earned him a huge grin. Especially since the Muse logo wasn't visible as I was wearing a partly zipped up hoodie.

I wasn't the only one who had forgotten something. My sister told me that she'd forgotten something that would make me freak out, if I knew what it was. So she didn't tell me, but said it was neither a ticket nor the camera. She went looking for a replacement in the airport stores, but they didn't have what she was looking for. Since I didn't know and could judge for myself if the mystery thing would really be so important, I wasn't panicking.







Stansted is a nice airport. I wish I had taken a picture of that ceiling.
At the airport I discovered the awesomeness that is Pret A Manger. Nom! I wish we had places like that.

Holy shit, the coach ride to Victoria Station seemed to never end. At least I was entertained by a text from a friend. She asked if we'll go and see a movie the next day. I replied with greetings from London. I had no idea how far outside of the city that airport is, we didn't see anything but highways for ages.

But then, finally, buildings! And in the distance the skyline. Although some of those skyline buildings prompted fangirly feelings ("OMG, it's Canary Wharf! *flashes back to Doctor Who's Doomsday♥ episode*"), I was already annoyed with the city. I've never been a fan of really big cities. The part I've seen for far was ugly, so was the weather and sitting in a full coach for ages is no fun either.
I was being grumpy and started hated on London. The architecture didn't help - randomly mixing styles. Big frigging buildings everywhere, every one of them trying to impress you. It looked like architects were doing length comparison. Couldn't they work together to shape a visually pleasing cityscape?
When we reached the city center, our coach ride turned into a bit of a sightseeing tour. Hey, Canary Wharf! The Tower + Bridge!





And what really amused me: we crossed the pink bridge. A few days earlier I was watching something with my mom and it showed a pink bridge which was clearly in London. We only saw it for a moment and needed to confirm that there actually is a pink bridge in London, so we looked up all the bridges in London (Yay, Wikipedia!). Ha, and there I was some days later, on that pink bridge.



We finally arrived at Victoria Station (which looked nice, at least partly) and I was ready to cry. Traveling is stressful, I'm not good with stress. We got oystercards (What a useful thing, why don't we have that here?). Stressed as I was I pretty much hit that card on the scanner until it worked. I'm sorry, card & scanner, it was nothing personal.

And then our odyssey started. With the train to Wandsworth Common. The maps weren't too helpful, so we wandered a bit, looking at street signs and asking people. One bus ride later we were closer, but still lost. We asked someone (it seems I'm lucky and find nice, helpful strangers when lost in a stange, big city at night), got pointed in the right direction, took a bus, still weren't at our hostel. I had hoped we'd get there before dark, but no. I was so close to crying, thought Fuck Wembley, I'm going home. If that next bus wouldn't get us to our hostel, I decided, we would take a cab, no matter how expensive that would be. But it was was the right bus. We saw the McDonald's that we knew is next to our hostel and we knew we we're there. FUCKING FINALLY! 8:50pm.

Chelsea Guest House is pretty simple, but okay. Even though we had a basement room at the end of a labyrinth.
And to continue with the stressfulness: the laptop refused to work properly and gave me the BSOD several times. Bastard. But we got it to work, so the day didn't end as shitty.


day 2 (Sept. 9 2010)
day 3 (Sept. 10 2010)
day 4 (Sept. 11 2010)
day 5 (Sept. 12 2010)
day 6 (Sept. 13 2010)