You sound like you're NOT from London...

You sound like you're NOT from London...

Easter weekend was fast approaching after my spring vacation in Spain, which was incredible. Still, the time to pass, the two weeks in between, were full of tests and projects and all-around school-stuff. There was little going on other than studying and celebrating a one-month anniversary of being with Tania. We decided to try and go to London, but did nothing of it during the first of the in-between weeks. The beginning of the second week we started to worry. Looking up the flight, we were appalled by the prices. We might not go. Then we found a cool-looking tour bus that left from Cologne on Saturday. We almost took it but then decided not to since we would really only have 1 day in London. It took all of Saturday to get there and all of Monday to get back. We kept looking, checking on ride sharing websites and couch surfing to lower the budget of our dream trip. Wednesday came and we had no plan. The next day was our ideal departure date to another country, but it was looking more and more like we'd be spending the break in Bonn. Having exhausted all our options for the trip Bonn-London, we called one last possible ride that was coming back from London early Monday. Tania spoke with him and, just for kicks, asked him if he was already in London, or when he was leaving. Thursday! Did he have room? Yes! Can we hop on? Yes! What would he charge? 30 Euros each way! That's less than Ryan Air on a good day! So we rejoiced and told our ride, Daniel,  'yes, yes, a million times yes'. We're going to London!

Holy Thursday we ran after the bus to the hauptbanhoff (which is my new favorite word) and took a train not to Chinatown, not downtown, but to Neus, the tiny town where we would meet Daniel. We ate a Durum and took off. Daniel was a nice, extremely tall German with a friend in Oxford. It started to snow as he started the car. And we talked in broken English until we got to our first of many rest stops where Daniel had a cigarette and I moved to the back seat to accompany Tania. It was cold as we crossed the border to the Netherlands, and we tried to find comfortable positions to sleep while Daniel took his Supertramp CD out of the case. We stopped at a gas station about three hours after we started, and it was freezing cold. I tried to speak German to the cashier handling a packet of cookies I had intended to purchase. Tania laughed at me (ouch) and said, "We're in Belgium, he speaks French." Half awake and confused, I succeeded to muster enough French to buy the cookies. Then it hit me, we just went through the borders of two countries! That's amazing! I told Tania and Daniel what I had discovered, and they obviously thought not much of it. This is Europe; international travel is a weekend thing.

When we crossed another border, remembering my previous enthusiasm for worldly propiolocation, Daniel let me know we were now in France. I wanted to share my excitement with Tania, so I woke her up. Droopy eyed and with a smile, she asked "Huh?"

"Tania, we're in France"

She turned her head right then left in a confused half-awakedness and uttered "...Bonjour"

As we woke up from a second nap, we were at the passport check for the ferry. We had to get out of the car in the freezing cold of the northern French coast and show our faces.

Every time I show my Mexican passport I feel special, especially when I travel with the AIB group - because they all have U.S. passports.

We went in the ferry and had a small free meal.

After the boat-ride, we drove for about an hour before we got to outer London. It was awkward driving on the wrong side of the street.

We turned and out of the corner of my eye - no!

it can't be!

It is!

Big Ben                                           

An incredibly majestic tower.

It awoke in me the same feeling that the Aztec pyramids gave me when I visited Teotihuacan some years ago.

 We arrived at our hotel really early. hoping they could lend us a closet to drop off our bags. Tired as all hell, we asked if they could give us a room early. To our surprise they could. It never hurts to ask. It was a downgrade from our booking, but we were not expecting luxury either way. We took the offer and took off to the room. Then we slept. Waking up a couple of hours later, we agreed to make the most of our London trip and not waste any time . We were hungry and we opted for the traditional fish n' chips. It was good, but greasy. The guy attending us did not really speak English. This is a phenomenon into which we ran over and over in London. Nobody speaks English - at least not proper English English - in  London!

That night we took a ride on the London Eye which was inspiring.

That night was cold and we were hurrying back to the hotel, but we  were also hungry. We found a Mediterranean restaurant and had an amazing meal.

Next day we woke up late, breaking our pact, and we took a hop-on hop-off tour. It was a lovely freezing raining typical day in London, but we braved the top deck of the double-decker bus.

The tour, we then realized would take about 4 hours.

We stopped about halfway through, frosty and hungry again, and went into a place called EAT. Because it's name screamed exactly what we wanted to do. What a coincidence. The cashier, again in broken English, gave us a couple of cake squares for free. He was nice.

We finished the tour and went to a modern art museum. It was much better than the one in Spain.

That night we stayed at a flat in south London, gracefully lent to us by a brother of a friend of Tania's.

Our last full day in London we decided to go to Stonehenge. No trip to UK is complete without it. It was difficult to find, hearing over, and over again that a bus to Stonehenge should be booked at least 2 days in advance. We thought the whole trip would cost us 30 lb. total but it cost more than twice as much because of our lack of planning. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Oh well.

Stonehenge itself was amazing. Really worth the trip. What we did not expect, maybe a little naively, was the cold there. The sun was out, but a chilling wind was blowing. And the cold wind won, and we eventually wanted to go home. But apparently, we missed the penultimate bus back by some minutes, and the next one came in an hour and a half. So we took shelter in the gift shop. There we found some funny beanies that looked like sheep/polar bears. I bought one for Tania. And we had a great time making sheep noises and laughing the rest of the time we waited for the bus.

We made our way back to London where we wanted to check out Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station.  We were hoping to see a cool Harry Potter display, but what we got was a half-cart merging into a wall for photo-ops. Kind of disappointing. We left, hoping that it was just the Muggles trying to be magic and failing. We ate some pizza in a close-by place.

That night we packed, and the next morning we were picked up by Daniel and made our way back to our home in Bonn.