London day two and three

London has been a blast so far, this city feels magical to me on so many levels. The hostel I'm staying at here called The Steam Engine is reaaly top class, the staff are great and and beds are comfortable. Stayling in a hostel here feels like having a mini family for a few days! I've met a number of really wonderful characters and other solo travelers while bumbling about.

The underground tube system here is wonderful and London is also just a decent walking city. Yesterday I woke up running on so little sleep that my whole body felt pretty gross, but I trekked out into the city to fight off the jetlag.

I saw the houses of parliment, big ben, the London Eye and while wandering I stumbled upon the ceremony for The Changing of the Guard at buckingham palace. The ceremony itself was slow but interesting.

While on the London eye I met a very nice traveler from Australia named Marcus. We chatted for about an hour and went to a local deli to grab some lunch. I got a drink of something called Yazoo, it was banana flavored and delicious!

I miss people back home, but so far traveling hasn't been too painfully lonely, people here love chatting with American tourists, and ate curious about you as a person.

After walking for a number of hours I came back to my hostel to take a breather and figure out what I wanted to do the next day. I got sidetracked almost immediately by these three lovely old English people. I sat and talked with them for a few hours, and they even bought me two stout mugs of guiness, offered a few kernels of advice for places to visit and talked to me a lot about there experiences during world war 2. The woman, named Sybel, talked about having to camp out in the london underground while the city was ravaged by German forces. They were greatful for the help of Americans during that time. Apparently they were given food like powered milk, powdered eggs and spam.

I didn't catch there names, but apparently to them I didn't come off as a typical American. They insisted that since I was American I must hate cricket and all it's rules. I laughed and replied that I don't know a lot about cricket and griped that American football also had too many rules, but that I like soccer fine, it's more fun to watch.

While drinking I hadn't eaten anything beforehand, and so drunkness hit me hard. A man from Ireland who was probably older then my dad insisted that I fancied him and I just laughed and shook my head. I stumbled up to bed and fell asleep almost immediately after he asked if he could "rub me down", the creep factor going up about ten fold there.

I'm sandwiched in a bunk between two young men who both snore, and was awoken by the worst headache caused by dehydration i've had. After asking a kind American tourist in the pub downstairs if he had earplugs, he very nicely offered me some, and I managed to sleep for the rest if the night just fine.

Today I'm planning to take a big bus tour of the city and visit the London dungeon. Tomorrow I'll take a day trip out to Brighton and go wandering.

I haven't quite figured out how to get the photos off my camera yet, but I'm going to wirk on that today and do some uploading and posting here.

I miss everyone, bur so far this trip has been a magical and transformative experience. I've learned a ton about myself already and am uncovering more every moment of the day.

On the third I head to Paris for a week, and then after that I'm not sure, but we will see where the wind takes me.