Emily and I spent a pretty long day getting to London from Paris, but it went very smoothly. We got there via Eurolines (the bus company in Europe)... so it was a bus ride from Paris to Calais, the bus drove onto the ferry to Dover, and then picked up again and headed toward London. The ferry was actually really nice, comparable to the ferry that I took in New Zealand between the north and south islands. Anyway, the bus dropped us at Victoria Station in London, and we were off to figure out how to reach Brockley (just a tube-ride away), and meet our new CouchSurfing host.
Rogerio turned out to be another great person from CouchSurfing. He's in his 40's, Brazilian, and working at an Australian pie shop on Portobello Road... home to one of London's busiest weekend outdoor markets. We passed out relatively quickly the first night reaching Rogerio's place, and rested up for our first day in London.
The following morning, Emily and I geared up for a trip to London Bridge, first thing. We took in some of the typical grey London atmosphere, and went for some shelter in the Tate Modern. The Tate is one of London's most popular and busy art museums, and it was well worth a visit. It was huge, and it had some really great and interesting art. We weren't able to finish seeing the entire thing, because we'd promised to meet Rogerio at his pie shop at a certain time for some free pies for lunch. After a pie and grabbing some sweet shades for the music festival to come in Dublin, Emily and I found a much needed internet cafe, in order to plan our next few steps. For dinner, we'd heard that there was a lot going on in the Picadilly Circle area, so we tried it out. It turned out to be a great idea, and we treated ourselves to a huge meal of tasty Moroccan food, with leftovers to spare. We fell asleep very easily upon return, even with an additional couchsurfer in the room with us whom we hadn't known about prior!
The next morning, we met this guy, Philip, and invited him out with us for our day spent at Wimbledon. Philip was a very nice Chinese guy, actually getting his Masters degree at Pace in NYC (we planned to meet up once I'm back). After buying some food and beer to bring into the grounds of Wimbledon, we successfully made it in and spent the day watching two awesome semi-final matches: first Berdyk v. Djokovic, then the real one we wanted to see, Nadal v. Murray. Once Nadal inevitably defeated Murray (yeah yeah England, boo hoo), we showed Philip around Picadilly Circle a bit before turning in for the night. To our surprise, Rogerio was now hosting three more couchsurfers! Roberto from Brazil, and Joao and Rebecca also from Brazil, but living in Ghent. The place was turning into quite a party...
Joao and Rebecca came with Emily and I the next morning to Portobello Market, since it only happened during the weekends. It was a really great flea-market type atmosphere, with everything from antique cameras, to touristy London memorabilia, to high-priced silver. Joao and Rebecca decided to continue on to find some comic book shop that a friend had recommended, so Emily and I next tubed it over to beautiful Regent's Park. It was a perfect day to walk around a park, and we took in Queen Mary's botanical garden inside, and hiked it all the way up to Primrose Hill (alllllll the way in the back of the park), for an incredible view of all of London.
We texted Joao and Rebecca about meeting up in a little while to go out for some drinks, but in the meantime checked out Trefalgar Square. Nice area, but we ended up having to leave soon thereafter to find our friends again. Via my friend Jess's recommendation, we all headed to Dublin Castle; a tiny Irish pub where many music legends have gotten their starts (Coldplay, U2, Jimi Hendrix, etc). Everyone watched Paraguay's World Cup defeat by Spain, and then headed to the music lounge in the back to have some more fun. All in all it was a great night, and we got to meet many local Brits as well.
The next day (have you been keeping track?) was Independence Day! Except it was our day of independence, not England's. And therefore in order to celebrate, Emily and I were reduced to having burgers and fries for lunch. GO AMERICA. Anyway, before that, we had woken up early to make it to the Changing of the Guard, which was a bit too packed with tourists for me. I guess it's a must-see, but we made it a see-very-quickly-and-get-the-hell-out-of-there. We had planned on returning to finish the Tate Modern, but ended up not having enough time to do that, as we needed to get back to Rogerio's place to grab our bags before making it to our bus to Manchester. We rushed back to get them, said hi to the two additional Chilean couchsurfers (Rogerio was a very generous man), and literally ran through the tube stations Amazing Race-style to make it to our bus... except we were about 5 minutes too late. Fret not though, because instead for a small fee we made it onto the next bus, only an hour later.
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