Monday- Reflections on Today (and the past few days as well) aka I'll Go Back B-B-B-Backwards

High Tea at an expensive hotel this afternoon where the doormen wore top hats and the servers slide your chair in behind you and place your napkins on your lap. I must have had 12 cups of tea over the 2 hours I spent with one of my roommates at the hostel, Alice. We ate the most decadent of finger sandwiches sans crusts while feigning elegance. The highlights of the high tea though were the scones with the most fantastic pear jelly and butter crème and the rosewater macaroons. All the treats were so rich and decadent that our tea was enough to tide me over for the rest of the night. And it’s a good thing too, because the tea cost 26 pounds.

Sunday- The First Day I’ve Seen the Sun Since Crossing the Atlantic

Yesterday I wandered around the Camden Town Markets. It was like Telegraph Ave. shoved into stalls. I didn’t find anything I really needed but made a few decisions while wandering about.
1) I’m going to have to live here this summer
2) I need skinny jeans (yes- skinny jeans. I actually bought them today at topshop where I was delighted to discover that they offer a student 10% student discount. They’re gray and super tight. I’m in love with them.)
3) The weather in London isn’t so bad. Sure its really cold sometimes, but its not too too bad. If anything its an excuse to wear a scarf.
4) I need to buy more boots. The brits love them. So do I.

Chocolate fondue and strawberries for dinner with the roommates in the communal kitchen.

Saturday- Snakebites Cure Headaches

A National Holiday in New Zealand where all the men get drunk and perform tribal rituals. In London all the Aussies and New Zealanders celebrate it with a pub-crawl and celebration at 4pm in Westminster in front of the cathedral. Aussie roommate Nicole and I woke up late in the day (details on why following) and watched the craziness go on from a throng of boozed people. After taking the obligatory tourist pictures in Trefalgar Square,
we decided that we should join in the celebration and headed to where we suspected the after party would be- the Walkabout. Lost watchers know that a walkabout is an adventure tour for only the most fit of people with heaps of experience in the wild (John Locke). In London, the Walkabout is a themed bar only for experienced Australians (Nicole). She introduced me to Snakebites, which are half cider, half beer, and some sort of berry liquor. They are such strong drinks that they are outlawed in Australia. I had two but then decided to stick to coronas rather than sampling VB- Victoria bitter, the cheapest beer in Australia. We moved from our post along the balcony on the top level to the ground floor where we found a little raised enclave where we could watch everyone squished about on the floor. After 2 or 3 hours, they stopped playing everyone’s kitschy favorites from the 80s, 90s, and today to dance music. Our favorite song of the night was “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and we sang along so loudly that everyone knew it (see Friday to find out why!). In our little enclave, we met Ben and Michelle- siblings from Australia. Ben was sleazy and kept hitting on us but Michelle was the sweetest girl ever. She was dying to dance, so I hit the dance floor with her and dirtied up my converse on the broken glass and muck. The meat market of a dance floor got to Nicole and me so we left at around 8pm and saw the queue of people waiting to pay an 8 pound cover fee and get in.

Happily tipsy, we ate Mc Donald’s fries on the way back to the hostel.

(obligatory tourist picture in Trefalgar Square)

Friday- The Camden Barfly: My Oasis In London

Found out at dinner that Nicole was a music lover and told her a lot of SUPERB stories- destroying her love of Jack White. Due to the lack of train service past midnight, Bernadette couldn’t join me for the 2 bands and dj set at a bar in Camden starting at 10pm, so Nicole and Jason came along with me instead. The place was amazing. Very smokey and jankey and definitely not a pub. I loved it. The first floor had a bar in the corner serving shots for a pound fifty and mixers for 4 pounds as wells as bad beer and Smirnoff ice. A couple booths lined the dark corners of the walls while beautiful people milled about. Downstairs was a broken atm and the jankiest bathrooms I’d ever seen. Upstairs was another bar and a stage about the size of that at popscene.

The first band, detachment kit, was American and sounded something like the thermals crossed with Tom Vek. Pretty enjoyable to tap my heels to. Although tapping was hard because the floor was so sticky and my shoes just stuck in place. After the set was over, Jason went to get another beer from the bar and returned with news of a Noel Gallagher look-a-like. Nicole and I had to investigate, so I went to the bar for another drink myself. I took my shot of tequila 6 inches away from, not a look-a-like, but the real deal. He was just chilling there with his scarf, fag, and drink. Keeping to himself and not being bothered by anyone. We wanted to talk to him but figured he’d just tell us to piss off or something. But then later thinking about it, we decided that that would have been even better than actually taking to him. Because, shit man, Noel Galager would have told me to piss off!!!

Anyway, the next band sucked so went downstairs to dance and left Jason to chat-up some girl. These people sure like their trance beats. They throw them behind anything and everything. I couldn’t be bothered too much by it and danced along anyway. Some guy told me to wish him a happy birthday, but he wasn’t that cute and didn’t offer to buy me a drink, so Nicole and I went back upstairs in time to get stuck behind Matt and Russel of bloc party. At the top of the stairs we were chatted-up by the drummer and tour manager of the detachment kit. I talked to the drummer about what I missed from the states and he shared my thoughts. It was getting close to groupie territory, so we grabbed more drinks at the bar and cozied up to the front of the room by the djs to dance to LCD Soundsystem. The music was pretty good- or would have been good if the trance beat wasn’t behind it. Can you imagine Power Out tweaked out? It’s a good thing I was pretty well lubricated at that time and didn’t care too much. Although we did decide to sit out a couple songs in protest. 3am was supposed to be closing, but things lasted till 3:15 and then we left and saved 2 drunken girls from being taken advantage of by a creepy guy.

It took us a while to get back to the hostel and we got ourselves mixed up and lost Jason, but we didn’t care. Life was pretty good and it wasn’t too cold in London that night.