If I hadn’t been previously informed on multiple occasions that London was the most beautiful and magnificent city in the world, I would have thought it sort of dirty and ugly. - Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”
Well ladies and gentlemen, against all odds I have made it to Europe. I write this from the Holiday Inn in Kensington, England--we have arrived in London.
My flight from San Francisco to Heathrow was blissfully uneventful. The plane wasn’t very full so there was an entire empty seat between me and the man on the aisle, and the whole thing went by very fast. British Airways, while still managing to serve up the most disgusting of food (I wish I could have taken a picture of the breakfast they gave us. It was a brown box with “Me, Myself & my...BREAKFAST BOX Mmmm...” printed on it very large. I laughed out loud very loud when it was handed to me.) has managed to scrounge up some decent in-flight movies that I actually had been wanting to see: Anonymous, Crazy Stupid Love, Tin Tin...and TROLL HUNTER??? IS TROLL HUNTER REALLY ON THIS??--Score one for my dad and John.
For the record, Anonymous is really, really bad.
One of the other magnificent things about this flight is that British Airways has begun serving complimentary booze as a beverage. For “dinner” they don’t even ask you what kind of drink you want, it was just straight up what kind of wine. In case you were curious, I had white wine and fell asleep watching Tin Tin. Which was pretty effing classy.
This was only briefly though, and I spent a great deal of the flight trying to fall asleep again, trying to find SOMETHING to listen to that would be calming and distracting and pleasant away from the plane engines. British Airways has a whole list of audio things you can listen to, and most of it is like “Smooth Jazz Hits from the 90’s!” EXCEPT that for some reason, at the very end of the list was, of all things, a spoken word audio book adaptation of Great Expectations! I guess as a celebration for Dickens’ 200th birthday or whatever, and it was so beautifully random and god-sent that I of course started listening to it, and the sounds of Herbert explaining the true tragic tale of Miss Havisham lulled me into what could at least pass for me sleeping on an airplane. It was kind of amazing, and for those of you reading this who were and are a part of our version of Great Expectations, I just want to say that I miss and love you very much.
I finally “woke up” when it was time to land and Jordan, Amanda and I (the other AIFS Cannes girls on the SF flight, who unfortunately weren’t sitting by me) shuffled off the plane with everyone and had to take a bus full of like 70 people and their huge luggage OUTSIDE where, in London, it is currently well below freezing. As we disembarked from the terminal, however, a flight from LA was just getting in, and a small woman in a fancy white coat and expensive haircut and sunglasses got off being chased by paparazzi! We were joking about them being there to take pictures of us (ha ha) but honestly had no idea who she was until we met up with all the AIFS kids in the arrivals area and the kids on the LA flight told us who it was --- KYLIE MINOGUE!!!! And everyone was like, who’s Kylie Minogue? Except for me, being like I HAVE TO TELL EVAN RIGHT THIS FUCKING INSTANT BUT I HAVE NO PHONE OR INTERNET, I SAW KYLIE MINOGUE GETTING CHASED BY PAPARAZZI!! UP VERY CLOSE!!
Boy: Is she even famous, like does she have songs out?
Me: Yes. She’s very popular in Canada. Giant posters all over the metro in Montreal. Especially in the Village, where they play her music a lot at...clubs...<<
So after that excitement wore off all of us AIFS kids with our obscene amounts of luggage were piled into two big vans, deliriously happy and chatty from the jetlag. We got to the hotel and checked in, met up with the kids who came on other flights, and then got dressed up warmer and left with a very large group of people to go exploring. This is becoming a theme on this trip, everyone meets in the lobby at a time and then gives up on trying to stay together and goes their separate ways, which works really well. No one is left out and you generally end up doing what you want to do. This being said, I ended up buying a day pass for the “tube” with my roommate Jenn and Nick Thompson and we took the tube to Picadilly Circus (after, of course, Nick managed to successfully (albeit briefly) convince several members of our AIFS party in the lobby that it was actually a circus) where we had lunch at a pub and wandered around, taking the tube to Covent Garden as well.
At 6pm we had to meet back at the hotel for a “meet and greet” reception thing, which turned out to be an AIFS representative telling us how things were going to go in London, and also that we definitely needed to party hard both tonight and tomorrow night, and that staying in wasn’t an option. He was funny and really chill and explained what to wear to clubs (basically not like a thug) and where to go where there was fun nightlife for everybody. The adults here are for the most part helpful and nice, if not somewhat ridiculous. Due to the universal incredible tiredness (and our 7:30am wake up call tomorrow), most everybody agreed it was a good idea to just go to low-key, intimate pubs and just like, have a drink and chill. Once again the large group migrated out, but separated into a smaller groups. It was so unbelievably cold out, like even the kids from places where it snows were hollering about the temperature, but we ran around being lost for long enough that we established a reasonable size group and ended up at an Italian restaurant/bar. We graciously asked for “Your cheapest bottle of red wine please!” which we split 7 ways, and for being what it was, excellent.
The waiter was being obnoxious, so we didn’t feel bad about making him take this picture of us like 5 times.
Tomorrow we have a big bus tour bright and early and then free time to explore London more. At 3am the next morning we’re leaving for the airport (Jesus. Fucking. Christ.) to transfer to Nice. More soon!
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