Happy Monday morning everyone! I hope you all are well rested and ready for a big succesful day hahah because I am definitely NOT. About an hour ago (at 9am) I arrived back to Asnieres after taking an overnight bus from London, and I probably slept a total of three hours which really wasn’t enough hahah and I feel pretty out of it. The good news is that this trip was totally worth the sleep deprivation I am experiencing right now, AND I have a long nap scheduled for after I am done writing this post.
I have lots to tell you about my weekend in London, but I had such a fantastic work week too so I want to tell you a bit about that first! This past week I worked lots of hours because Prunette got chickenpox. “Lots of hours” never sounds like much fun, but because the French are allowed parade their chickenpoxed children all around and everywhere EXCEPT schools, Prune and I had a fun week filled with Paris outings and Disney movies when she got tired.
One of the mornings, Prune and I went out to Paris and met up with Maira, Jess, and Cameron to get coffee and then lunch. It was so so so much fun to finally introduce Prune to my au pair friends and show them how cool she is. THey all said she was adorable and too sweet and that I am probably the luckiest au pair in the world. I don’t think meeting my friends was super fun for Prune, for she was feeling a little shy, but she sat in my lap and used excellent manners and didn’t even complain once. Watching Prune behave that way made me so proud to part of the team that has raised her, and as she sat there on my lap she felt even more like a little sister than ever. :)
Another fun thing I did this week was go out to get drinks and desserts with Chloe and Marlene. The EuroCup is taking place in Paris right now, so there are young people from all over Europe here to watch soccer games and route for their favorite teams, and my friends and I wanted to join in the fun just for the heck of it hahaha. So we went to a little street full of sports bars and shared an ice cream Sunday and mostly just watched all the people get super wound-up about the soccer game that was going on. It was a pretty great evening and it felt good to leave the house a bit. Taking care of Prune when she is sick is something I really enjoy doing. I like giving her all her medicine, getting her all cozy and making her feel loved, but having some me-time was nice too. It was a good Wednesday. :D
Okay okay okay, now for the London part! Well, on Friday night when Cecile got home from work, I left the house to meet Chloe at the bus station. We both had big backpacks filled with snacks (to make the trip less expensive) and we really couldn’t contain our excitement. On the metro to get to the bus station, I realized that I have always really wanted to go to London. And yes, I have always had that urge to see the world and stuff, but before I really got into traveling, before Juliana and Chile and all that, I really wanted to go to London hahaha and I was finally making that happen! We were absolutely stoked.
It is pretty normal to run into difficulties while traveling, but I don’t think it is normal to run into how many tiny difficulties we ran into and just laugh your way through them. On the 10 hour bus ride from Paris to London, our bus was always either wayyyy too hot or FREEZING cold, we got taken into questioning while trying to cross the border into the UK because I guess we are suspicious looking gals, and we even bought some chocolate covered pretzels that just ended up being pretzel shaped chocolates and I know that doesn’t really qualify as a normal “difficulty” but honestly that was both hilarious and so dissapointing hahahah. Sleeping was a challenge, because there were no comfortable positions to be in and we kept getting woken up for different reasons by the bus driver or the people around us, so I think we slept about four hours that night. But when we arrived in London, our enthusiasm gave us fresh new energy and we took off for our London adventure!
The first thing we did was find a cafe to change our clothes in and grab some coffee. It took us forever to find a cafe because it was like 7:30am and nothing was open, but we eventually succeeded in finding something. We got some super watery coffee and ate it with some banana bread I had prepared for the trip, and then sort of stumbled upon Buckingham Palace on accident so we checked that out and enjoyed our breakfast in the park around it. We were running on the fakest energy, but we really enjoyed ourselves. We took our first touristy pictures before heading off down random streets to find the other touristy stuff. We were not worried about time because by then it was only like 9:00am and we had all the time in the world and no plans. We eventually ran into Trafalgar Square and after that wandered around till we found Big Ben and Westminster and the Eye and we walked a big circle around all of those things. I was in awe because everything was so big and surreal and everyone spoke English and the cars drove on the other side of the street and everything was just SO CLEAN!
We were proud to have already crossed the most touristy things off our mental lists of what we needed to see in London, and since our backpacks were beginning to feel heavy on our shoulders, we decided to find our hostel so we could drop of the majority of our things and continue exploring the city. The hostel took us a bit over an hour to find, but walking down the little streets in SoHo was pretty fun, and when we did find our hostel, we were pleased to discover that the staff was super friendly and helpful, so that was great. After dropping off our big backpacks, we decided that we needed some energy before doing any more walking so we found a cute little restaurant and ordered some fish n’ chips! At that restaurant, a grumpy British man accused me of flicking my hair into his mouth and I discovered that I fear angry British accents, and we changed tables. A bit later during our dining experience, an old American couple sat down next to us, and we ended up having quite the conversation with them. They were very sweet and from St. Louis and they thought our motivation to travel was admirable and had lots of questions about what we do in Paris. We talked to them for a good hour, and when it was time to move on and do more sight-seeing, they told us that they had picked up our check and wanted us to have fun and enjoy our time in England. Getting free food is always nice, but what really touched me about this encounter was how I felt like a protected little child when they did that, and it feels good to be taken care of abroad. You see in their eyes that they thought we were really good kids and had really liked talking to us, and because of this little experience I have decided that someday I will find some au pairs abroad and buy them some lunch and make them feel cared for. :D
After lunch, Chloe and I decided to walk to the very other side of the city to see Platform Nine and Three Quarters! It was a long walk to see a silly little wall, but I was glad we did it, just because now we can say that we did. After that, we decided to walk even further away from the center to check out the Camden Market, which ended up being AMAZING. It was huge and smelled of delicious South American foods and wandering around inside was like being in a maze. We didn’t buy anything, but we got lots of food samples and on our way out, we split a cronut, simply because we found the name entertaining and had run out of energy again. When we had seen lots of the market and it had begun to get dark outside, we walked like two hours back to our hostel and decided to regroupe for a half hour before heading out to get a drink at a pub (because we thought that would be very British of us). When we got to our hostel room, we met the other people who would be staying with us and they were all really cool people! There were two students from Boston, a pair of sisters from Texas (one who will start wroking as a Physical Therapist next week and the other who works for TeenVogue), and a French brother and sister (and engineer and a Med student). We all hung out in the room and talked for awhile before going our own ways for the evening. Chloe and I were sooooooot tired, so we went to the pub for about a half hour before getting back to the hostel to take showers and get in bed early. When we were about to fall asleep, Chloe looked up how far we had walked on her phone and it turns out we had walked over 15 miles! Because we had done so much walking and so little sleeping, it took us very little time to fall asleep that night and boy, did we sleep well!
The next morning, we got up at 8:30am to get some hostel breakfast before heading out to find the big London Bridge, check out a different market, and see one of Shakespeare’s theaters. The hostel breakfast was yummy and donation based, and with full bellies and renewed energy from our long sleep, we were ready to take on London all over again! The market we wanted to see ended up being closed, but the walk we took to get there ended up being very pretty and I am glad we went. Shakespeare’s Theater was just kind of an old looking building with a lot of expensive Shakespeare-ish souvineers, but I am glad we got to see that too. When we got to the London Bridge, we were really confused and realized that what we actually had been looking for was the Tower Bridge, and then we saw how far away it was and decided that the view was probably better from further away anyhow hahah.
After that, we stopped at a cafe to get some more fuel and think about what we wanted to do next. We decided to walk all the way to Abbey Road because the walk would take us through a pretty park. We began this super super long walk, and when we got to the park there was a food festival going on and it smelled so good that we got overwhelmed and had a lunch in the park. I ordered a veggie-dog, which ended up being just a bunch of vegetables in a hot-dog bun, and so that was exciting hahah. When we were done eating, we continued our strolling and conversating. The park was gigantic and so clean yet so wild looking and I absolutely loved it. I realized that I felt very at home in London, which is something I never would have expected. When we were in the park, we even saw some dudes playing Cricket! Yeah! That is a thing. Who knew?! I am kidding. I am tired.
A little over an hour later, we arrived to that famous little crosswalk and walked across it twice. We then decided that since it was already 4:00pm, we should probably head back towards the center, so we tried to take a bus, but the bus driver said “no, you don’t have tickets and you can’t buy tickets so get off” and so we got off. As the bus pulled away, however, Chloe spotted a little bike rental station that was only 2 pounds for the first hour, and there were two bikes left! Since it was clearly meant to be, we rented the bikes and took off with the hugest of smiles. As we were riding, we realized that we had made a great decision, and then as we kept riding, we realized we had made a terrible mistake. Bike lanes in London are about three inches wide, and since we weren’t used to driving on the opposite side of the street, this made for a very stressful experience hahah. I mean we were tired so we were laughing, but I also kind of thought we were going to die, so as soon as we could we turned into a park and had a much less stressful riding experience there. WHen we had about 15 minutes left for our bikes, we realized we were close to our hostel, but probably not close enough to make it back to the rental station across the street from the hostel, so we decided to head in that direction and stop at the first rental place we say on the way. While walking around London, we had seen tons of the little rental stations, but for some reason being in a huge hurry made them all disappear! We really didn’t want to be charged more money, so we decided the only solution was to ride as fast as we possibly could to get to the station across from the hostel. But Sally and Chloe riding bikes quickly in England looked much different than it would have in the US. We were yelling at each other to look out for cars, swerving around people, trying to find the right streets, and laughing like maniacs but also like almost crying because we were scared, exhausted, and had way too much adrenaline. As we passed a couple in all of our craziness and excitement, I heard a boy say to his girlfriend “oh my lord, that has to be the most American thing I have ever seen” as he pointed at us and we made eye contact and I just started laughing and shrugged and then kept peddling as fast as I could. We ended up locking up our bikes at the station with ONE MINUTE to spare and it was a miracle. We were dripping in sweat and giggling because that whole ordeal was so stressful but we were so proud of ourselves! We walked arcross the street to grab out backpacks from the hostel, and then began slowly making our way back in the direction of Victoria’s Station so that we would be there early for our bus and get good seats.
On the way, we saw a sign advertising “Cornish Pasties” which sounded like the most unappetizing food ever, but it was so entertaining as a name and they looked just like empanadas so we shared a spicy veggie one as a sort of dinner meal. We then went to a grocery store to get snacks for the bus ride back (ALWAYS BRING SNACKS ON OVERNIGHT BUSSES BECAUSE YOU WILL GET SO HUNGRY). We got sea salt & vinegar flavored gold fish, some fresh coconut, some tea biscuits, and some oranges, and we were set. We stopped at one last pub to change into our comfy bus clothes, and then after about an hour of waiting in line, we were back on the overnight bus! Our bus was supposed to leave at 8:00pm, but when everyone was on it it didn’t start moving. The speakers came on in the bus and we thought we were being adressed by the driver, but we soon discovered that one of the employees had accidentally switched on the microphone and was saying things like “where is the driver? God, he isn’t even here yet. No! I will not be driving this bus tonight. I’m not the driver! I just want to go eat dinner!” and things like that and the entire bus was totally cracking up hahaha. Eventually, the bus started moving and our experience on the way home went much more smoothly. We didn’t get called into questioning going through immigration and on the ferry, we drank hot chocolate and made funny faces back and forth with three adorable little British girls.
Everything that happened once we got back on the bus is a blur to me. I know I must have slept a lttle bit, or maybe talked to Chloe a little, but I mostly remember the drivers voice telling us we were in Paris, walking to the metro, getting home and showering, and then lying down to write this post. I want to take a nap, but I don’t feel sleepy which is really annoying because I know I need sleep. My eyes can’t focus very well on anything and all of my reactions are a bit delayed hahah but I am having a good day and I think Prune and I will have fun after school today!
This is my last full week in Paris and I am going to try to make the most out of every single day and I cannot wait! :D
Okay. That is all for now. Bye! :)
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