Heather Anne

My second trip to London feels so different than the first, mostly because navigating The Tube doesn't make me want to fall down in the middle of the train station and cry like a little baby this time around, and everything is just a bit more... familiar. Part of it is that I am staying in the same chain of hostels Jenn and I stayed at in Edinburgh and one night in London on our last trip. The bar is blue, the floors are blue, the ceilings are blue, the walls are blue. All of the bunk beds are red alumninum, and the whole place is staffed by Aussies. (Who I adore above all other nationalities, on account of their friendliness.)

Last time, London spit me out bleeding and broken at the end of four days with nothing to show for it but a dozen crumpled Underground maps and a hundred pictures of Big Ben. This time, I picked up a map for posterity, but I haven't really needed it yet. (I will get lost in the bowels of The Underground today, now I've said that.) The price of an all-day pass on The Tube has nearly doubled in three years, and with the weakness of the Dollar against the Pound I am paying about 12 bucks a day to get around. (Which, by the way, is still less than I'd be paying to commute to my old job.)

The flight here was kind of madness; in the middle of boarding, US Airways assigned our pilot to another flight. They brought in a 'Quick Call Crew' which took about four hours, and as it was the middle of the night, I pulled out my sleepsack, propped by head on my backpack, and fell aslseep in the middle of the airport. I awoke to the sound of a disgruntled man saying, 'Backpackers will sleep anywhere, the lot of them.' Sure enough, I was surrounded by about six other folks in sleeping bags, and one of them was playing his guitar. I grinned stupidly at the guitar guy and fell back asleep, mentally crossing 'hobo' off my To Do list.

Someone stole my shoes while I was sleeping in the airport, so I arrived in London in my sock-feet. But I guess the point is: I arrived.