I left Brussels at 615 this morning. The bus ride was okay, nothing special except for maybe the ride through the channel tunnel. It was kind of strange, after going through the customs procedures leaving France and entering England, the bus made this kind of long winding drive to an overpass with about 5 or 6 cars that were already stopped. In a few minutes the cars ahead of us began to drive onto a train, the bus followed. After getting onto a flatbed car, it drove a few hundred yards into the train and the bus driver opened the doors and turned off the motor. For the next 40 minutes we sat in the bus that was packed in a train car as we made our way towards England. I don’t know if I should be surprised at that or not, but I kind of thought that the Channel Tunnel was drivable, just like all other tunnels I can think of.
Okay, now it’s time for me to whine a little, or maybe vent is the best word. I made it to the bus station in one piece at about 1100 in the morning. All good. I know that I need to get to London Bridge Station, so my first goal is to get a map, preferably of London, but I’ll take one of the underground, or any other map I can get. Most places that I go to you look for the information center and they help you out, but not here. They wanted to sell me one, and I didn’t have any Pounds, just Euros, so that didn’t work. I decided to go outside to get a feel for where I was, and saw a sign that said “Tourist Info” so I followed that until I got there and got a map and a basic idea of what I needed to do next—take a train to London Bridge Station. So I go to buy a ticket and the line is, no lie, about 100 yards long. It takes me about 30 minutes to finally buy the ticket that I need. I do catch the train and exit at London Bridge, and look for my directions to the hostel and I can’t find them. I had them before I got on the train, but they weren’t there when I got off. I do remember that I need to go to Charlton Train Station so after asking a few people, I find the train going to where I needed to go. I get there, remember I’m going on memory I don’t know the hotel name or address, I talk to a worker at the station. This was about the time that I had lost almost all composure that I had had, I had been walking around with two backpacks on trying to get to the hostel for about two hours. Like I said I was at the “end of my rope” and started to talk and I couldn’t really form any words, I had to apologize to the lady behind the counter, she handled it well though. She told me, “that’s okay, just take a minute.” After explaining the situation she tells me that there is a hotel just at the end of the road. She was so nice and as I approached the reception I was still silently thanking her. I told the guy behind the counter that I “may” have a reservation with his hostel, so he looks me up on the computer and says, “Yeah, you do. For Monday.” (today is Saturday). So there I was two backpacks, no room or bed, not a clue of what to do, and that’s when he made my day. He calls another hostel and finds me a bed for the next two days. He gives me another map and writes the points that I need to go. By this time I was about mush. I really couldn’t form any intelligent thought so I took his direction and headed back the way I came to London Station. By then it had started to rain, but I asked a few people and founded the street that I needed and headed out. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but let me say that the hostel is about 10 minutes from the station and it took me about an hour to actually arrive. It seems that at every turn I made the wrong decision and would have to backtrack to correct my mistakes.
To summarize I made it to London at 11 in the morning and to my hostel at 5 pm. No worries though, I’m here sitting in a pub drinking a pint of Stella, and recounting something that will definitely make me smile a week from now.
I ended up leaving the hostel about 530 to see if there was anything close by to take some pictures, and managed to get a few of the London Tower and other tourist attractions. Except for forgetting my rain jacket and umbrella and having to seek shelter from rain showers it was a pretty productive touristy trip.
Another thing that I feel I have to say about Amsterdam is the bikes. I have never been to a place that people ride bikes as much as they do here. Trust me when I say they take their bicycles seriously, more than the Chinese or Vietnamese. There are three lanes to every street here, one for cars, one for bikes, and one for pedestrians.
