My European Invasion: Hello London!

December 30th

After a sad goodbye to Cecilia and Carl, I once again found myself in the chaos of traveling from point A to point B. This time my point B is a long anticipated destination, London! On the train towards Dartford, where I was going to stay with my friend Michael and his family for the New Years; a random man a few seats from me asked me out of the blue: “could I stay at yours?” I was a bit shocked since we didn’t really make eye contact nor exchanged any words beforehand. “uh, I am sorry but I am not going to my home at the moment” was all I could reply. It was slightly awkward for the next few stops till he decided to get off the train. Welcome to London I thought to myself.
Michael picked me up from the train station shortly after the weird confrontation.

Michael has a younger brother named Alex, who is 17, and is nothing like my 17 year old brother named Alex. First time he met me he immediately made a comment, isn’t Adrian a guy’s name? Interesting character that one.

The next day Michael showed me around the heart of London. Getting out of the train station, I immediately found myself in front of Big Ben!!! Whoa, didn’t expect to see a landmark that soon! Excitement was pulsing through my veins. The next few landmarks were a bit of a blur, I think they include Leicester Square and the Houses of Parliament. We went to see the changing of the guards where at one point I got yelled out to get out of the guards way (hard to when there are so many people and you don’t know where the guards are heading to next). Then we walked down the Pall Mall to the Buckingham Palace! It was spectacular! The flag was up too, which meant that the Queen was inside!!

After spending sometime there, we went to China Town, where Michael got some Chinese food and I found a place where they sold bubble tea (which I will get next time I find myself in China Town again). There was an M&M store which through the window I saw a staged argument between a guy dressed as a giant M&M and a guard. Michael and I had lunch in Trafalgar Square. It was fabulous; there was a fountain, a countdown till the London summer Olympics, and next thing I know there was a huge band in costume marching their way up the stairs. After finishing our lunches, we went on one of the stone banisters to get a better view above the crowds so I could take a video of the band for my brother to see. After a while I heard Michael say to me, “Mate, we need to go now”. I responded, “Not yet I want to hear the rest of the song” then he replied, “This woman wants us to get down”. I look over to where he was and there was a security woman in uniform waiting for us to get off of the structure.

So far I managed to get in trouble in three different countries: at a museum in Germany, at the Gardens in Austria, at the Changing of the Guards and in Trafalgar Square within the UK. Success!! You truly haven’t been to another country it seems until you are told off by a person of authority; strangely I don’t think I got into trouble when I visited Sweden- what a shame.

After a quick tube ride we ended up at the Camden Market- which has to be one of the places in London that I really can’t wait to visit again. Camden Market is like the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco but so much more immense!!!! It has a similar vibe as The Haight too, with a bohemian atmosphere. Michael put his bargaining skills to work as we were able to get 6 fresh donuts for around a pound fifty each. There were so many clothes and items that I wanted to buy but unfortunately I didn’t really find any bargains. Then Michael took me to this one futuristic shop that was filled with black lights and loud music called The Cyber Dog. It was pretty cool, but my ears have always been sensitive and I was wondering how the hearing was of the Cyber Dog’s employees since they have to be in that environment way longer than the 15 minutes that I was in there.

We ended our day in London by going to two pubs, one of which was a gay pub which I was interested on going to just to say I’ve been. At each place, I would get asked for my ID while Michael, who is only 19, never was bothered for ID. Well on the plus side, if I look under 18 when I am 21, hopefully the trend continues when I get older!

Later in the evening, when I was helping on setting the table (since Michael wasn’t helping at all), I put the silverware on the table- finding that they have pretty small spoons… When Michael and his mom looked at the table, they saw the spoons and asked “why did you put teaspoons out instead of the regular sized spoons?” We all had a good laugh. I just completely missed the normal sized spoons when searching in the silverware drawer.

All in all it was a great day!