Sleepless In London

I've always wanted to visit London, but for one reason or another, such an opportunity has been stubbornly evasive. Until recently. After responding to a job ad, I was called to the British capital for an interview. I will spare you the largely irrelevant job hunting-related details, but regardless, I am now ready to share the impressions from my first visit to the city of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.

Well, since I'm already doling out clichés, let's continue with that for a bit, shall we?

The weather was.. cloudy (surprise, surprise!), with a little rain now and then. The architecture was magnificent and the prices on everything - from food to transportation to accommodation - outrageous. Then again, the city itself - from its big attractions (the Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, the London Tower, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, etc) to the little charming things like old taxis and the famously red phone booths, is probably worth it, after all.

Traveling on a budget (as always), I chose to stay at the Piccadilly Backpackers' Hostel. The location was perfect, the place was relatively clean and it had Internet access - what else could a backpacker ask for? Actually, based on my experience, I have some suggestions.

For one, it would have been nice not to be sharing the room with five (male) adolescents who inevitably arrived drunk and proceeded to make a terrible ruckus, switching the lights on and off and in every other way ignoring their more mature roommates (some of whom, may I remind you, had job interviews the next morning). Evidently, they, too, were having a great time in the city.

Fortunately, my last night there, I was sharing with girls who were much nicer, but then there was also this albino dude who descended on us straight from the Da Vinci Code (the movie). I mean absolutely no offence to our albino readers, but he really reminded me of the movie character.

Anyway, in the middle of the night the albino roomie started angrily shouting something in some obscure (medieval?) language, then got up, circled around the room, got back to bed, got mad at something again and raised his voice even higher, talking furiously and incomprehensibly to himself.

Forgive my close-mindedness, but I was jolly scared - mostly because I wasn't even sure if the guy was asleep or awake or what, although it hardly mattered - either way, I was getting pretty certain he was nuts.

Now that I am writing and joking about it, it doesn't sound even remotely scary, but believe me - being in a room with an angry somnambulant albino running circles around you will quickly make even the toughest girls out there wet their beds (which did not happen to me, may I add proudly). Eventually, the dude calmed down, but you can probably guess how sound of a sleeper I was for the rest of the night. Not very.

I guess, I am giving you a rather skewed impression of my trip, so let me change gears and switch to the more optimistic conclusion.

For me, being in London was like a dream come true, and the city is now definitely high on my list of places to live in for a while. Londoners in general impressed me so much with their charm and hospitality that I was even considering copying their habit of drinking tea and eating sandwiches at five. Well, almost.

Posted by Irazema in London on 08/Jul/2006

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