No, what actually happened over there.

Last summer, my best friend and I went to Europe for five weeks. The traditional American Backpacking Trip!!
Here are my accounts, recorded and reported to you via my journal. To hear the other side of each story, please look towards Kim Perkins Blog found here http://www.perky1.blogspot.com/


Tuesday, June 15 2004

We’ve been here a full day and I’m so tired. Yesterday seems like a blur. I feel like I’ve been walking around London all week.
The plane rides weren’t too terrible. Kim didn’t sleep very well. My television didn’t work for a major part of the trip flying over the ocean. I must say that walking onto that massive Virgin Atlantic AirBus was like walking on to a movie set. I think there were 18-20 flight attendants, each of them beautiful and with wonderful accents. Taxi-ing took forever and we didn’t eat until 11:30 at night, (our time) but besides that, I got a few good hours of sleep and it went rather fast.
So when we landed we went through customs found our baggage (almost found someone else’s eh Kim) and quickly bought tickets for the tube.
We took the tube from Heathrow to Hyde Park. It was very stuffy and hot. I was surprised at how long it took. London is so large. We then made it to Hyde Park were it seemed like we walked forever. We checked in and moved into our room. Four bunk beds, four sets of lockers, a sink, and a mirror. At first, it looked like we only had one roommate but that wouldn’t be for long.
After checking in it was time to find food. The eating schedule is pretty much messed up. While people at home are getting up to have breakfast we are having a 2 o’clock lunch. We ate at a place called “The Swan”. It was only a short walk from our hostel. I had a chili beef potato and a Guinness. It was pretty good, nothing I couldn’t have at home. I wouldn’t have spent nearly $14 on it at home but it was worth it, I was starving.
By this point, we had already been asked twice if we were Americans. Our French waiter at the Swan assumed we were either from the west coast or the great lakes region. I assumed that was he knew about American geography. After our fill of potato and beer we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus. At the Oxford Circus stop we quickly jumped off and ran because of two sets of wandering eyes across from us.
We walked up from the underground to see the familiar London I remember from the pictures. It was pretty cool. There was a large statue with many tourists sitting around digital billboards covering tops of buildings, and surprisingly lots of department stores.
We hadn’t been there two minutes when a young American asked us for the time. His name was Chris and he was from Chicago. He walked around with us for a while. I got bored quickly at Piccadilly Circus. It wasn’t the best that London has to offer. I’m not sure how much longer we actually walked around before grabbing dinner at PRET, which I wish we had in the US, and eating in Hyde Park. (Chris had left at this point) As we sat in these green chairs, that we didn’t know we we’re to pay for, it started to get cold. We decided to go back and change. That turned into taking showers and going to bed at 7. I did wake up from hunger, and met some of the girls that were in our room. Mindy and Mel. They are from Pennsylvania. Around eleven more people started moving on to our floor. One of the ladies insisted that we turn off the lights and thats when we finally tried to fall asleep, but not until our final roommate moved in. He was a young French guy named David. We all talked to him for a minute, then I was forced to roll over when he started taking off all of his clothes.