Buses Suck

Greetings everyone,

For those that saw the last blog entry without photos, I recommend taking another look as I've added some.

I don't even know where to begin this entry. We've done so much since last time I posted.

Camden is awesome, that's where I'll start. If you ever go to London, definitely check it out. I got a pocket watch there, and I've wanted one for so long. Liesl got a purple beanie and some new gauged earrings. That was Tuesday.

We went to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday. It was kind of cool, but definitely not as awesome as the other stuff we'd seen.Honestly though, everything here reminds me of music. Some people think of the Queen when they go to Buckingham Palace, I think of The Sex Pistols.

 Liesl wasn't feeling well, so we laid down in Green Park for a while. She decided to go back to our hosts' and rest, and I went to Covent Gardens.

                                                              Spoiler: 

                                                 Covent Gardens is not a garden.

I was a little bummed out on that personally. But it's still a nice area, so it was alright. Both Liesl and I realized that day that we needed to pay more attention to giving ourselves room for alone time. I loved walking around on my own. I somehow ended up by the Thames, and found the London Court or something, which is a fantastic building.

That night Liesl was feeling much better, so we went out to this lesbian club. It was way more low key than we'd though it would be, but we ended up talking to some people, one of whom we may hang out with when we're back in London for Christmas. Liesl sang some awesome karaoke, but everyone else was lame, so I was her fanclub.

Here's where it actually gets interesting.

We left the club around 1 a.m., maybe even a little before. The tube unfortunately doesn't run that late, at least not a a Wednesday night, so we had to take the bus. Our oyster cards--the ones for the underground--also work for the bus, so everything seemed fine. We went to the bus stop and looked at the schedule. The bus that we needed, the N18, was due to come in 10 minutes.

So we waited. But 10 minutes slipped away, and we were still waiting. Multiple buses with deceptively similar names stopped where we were. Then we finally saw the bus. It was freezing outside, and while Liesl had her warm REI jacket, I only had my not very warm punk jacket. But the bus sped right by us. We assumed that it would turn around and come back our way, or that another bus would follow it.

Another one did come, but it too drove right on past us. We chased it, thinking that it would stop on the next block. It did, but only because of a red light. We tapped on the door and pleading to get on, but the driver was kind of a jerk, and he just shook his head and shooed us away. I can understand that he probably wasn't supposed to let people on at a red light, but what he was supposed to do was stop at our stop!

We were frustrated, tired and cold. We found another bus stop, one that we thought might be in a better place than the other, and it said that the N18 would be there in 14 minutes or something. So we waited. It did finally come, and we got on. It was so wonderfully warm in there compared to outside.

We'd been on the bus for about 10 minutes and we'd reached another of the multiple stops when the bus driver asked us where we were going. Harrow-on-the-Hill, we said. He informed us that we were on the wrong bus. He pointed us vaguely in the direction of the correct bus stop.

I'd like to take a moment to say something about how the English give directions. Now, there are many British stereotypes that are not completely true. The three main that we came up with are that English people all live in castles, have bad teeth, and drink tea all the time. In fact, we didn't have any tea until a couple of days ago (though we have had it many times since then). And yes, some people here have bad teeth, but perhaps it's because they aren't stupid enough to empty their pockets in orthodontists vacations funds. They don't all live in castles, though this isn't so far off, as many of the houses here--and buildings in general--do often resemble castles, or at least are old enough to seemingly have been from medieval times to a west coast American that is taken aback to see any building that predates 1990.

But about directions. "Excuse me, could you tell us how to get to London Bridge from here?" "Yes, you just go along this road and then go right then left." I'm sorry? And I should add that there are no hand gestures to accompany this. If you're lucky, we'll get a "left" or "right," arm gesture, though hopefully we've at least figured  that our by this point. (If you haven't yet determined left from right, you'd might as well cross England off of your bucket list, as you probably won't even be able to find your way out of the airport).

Part of this ineptitude at giving directions surely stems from the fact that there are virtually no street signs here. They just don't exist. Occasionally we've encountered a sign on a corner building, which we can only assume is the name of one of the streets there. Every once in a while there's a normal-ish sign on a pole like we have in California, but that's pretty rare. It's been rather odd though, to hear directions without a single street name. In California, people will just get their own directions if you can't give them the name of even one insignificant little street within your highly specific directions. I used to not know the names of any streets, but once I started needing to get and give directions, I began to pay attention to them. However, this is woefully unhelpful in England.

Anyway, back to my story.

We did find the other bus stop, but the next N18 wasn't coming for 18 minutes. So we waited. For me, it was one of those horrible waits comparable to being in a terrible class at school where you just can't help but look at the clock every one minute. It was freezing, so we moved into an alcove to the door of a restaurant. After standing there for eternity and a day, our bus really did come. The right bus.

The ride seemed incredibly short, maybe because we both sort of dozed off. Liesl woke me when we got to Harrow. I sat up, and spent the next 15 minutes looking for something familiar that was closer to our hosts' house than the tube stop. I was so tired, but I was determined to avoid walking the 15 minutes back to their house in the cold. Alas, the tube station was the only thing we recognized.

We got off and began walking back. It was so cold that my knee caps felt frozen, which hasn't really happened to me before. Of course, right after got off the bus, the bus turned down the street that we were heading to. Sigh.

We miserably power walked back, half because we were freezing and half because we just wanted to get back as fast as possible. Finally we arrived at their house. We went right to bed, and it was so wonderfully warm.

 It was after 4 a.m. That's right, it took us three hours to get back.

More on our travel mishaps later.

Oh, one last thing. If anybody reading this has any writing connections, like travel writing, or blog publishing, please let me know, as I'm hoping to do some professional travel writing on this trip. Thanks!