Beginning to explore London

I slept until around noon the next day (a good 12 hours or so). It was already December 20, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Luckily, the family offered to let me stay for Christmas, so I figured that if I couldn’t get a flight home, that option would be highly superior to sitting in my dorm room alone.

I decided to go explore the neighbourhood a bit, and headed up the high street for some shopping. There were a lot of pound shops, and I had some fun looking in the Primark. I walked a long ways, all the way back up to the tube station, looking in the shops along the way, and then headed home.

On my walk-about.

That night was just relaxing, and when I went on the Internet, I found out that two people I knew from the program I did during my gap year were also in London, and planning to meet up the next day at the British Museum, so I decided to come along as well! I also heard from my parents that the only option they had found that could possibly get me home in time for Christmas would be to train to Belgium (which would have been hard because the trains were pretty much at a standstill), fly to South Africa, then to Brazil, then to Canada, and it would cost $4500.

Tuesday (December 21), I got up fairly early because I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to take the tube to meet my friends (especially since everything was still running slowly because of the weather). Luckily, one of the cats had come in nice and early to make sure I was awake to give her some pets, so I was well awake by the time I needed to be.

I got on the tube and had no trouble getting to the Museum, so I was quite early. It gave me some time to look around the neighbourhood, and I found a few camera shops that I had some fun looking in. Then I went into the museum and stuck pretty close by the Rosetta Stone where we were supposed to meet.

British Museum.

Rosetta Stone.

I found the girl right on time, but she said the guy was running late. We looked around for a while trying to see if we could find any Banksy graffiti (apparently there had been some there at one point, but it was removed), and then we decided that we were both really hungry so we would just go to the Thai restaurant and wait there.

We ordered our food and it ended up showing up before he did. I really enjoyed my meal, and it was gone by the time he showed up (1.5 hours late). We chatted while he ate, and it was really nice to see people from Katimavik.

We went back to the museum to look around and saw some neat things (a lot of mummies). We also saw a little display about the massive amounts of inflation in Zimbabwe & how it was cheaper to print posters on money than on paper just because of how worthless the paper was.

There were bills worth $20,000,000,000 in this poster. That's how bad the inflation was. There were even notes worth trillions of dollars in the display.

I needed to get home because of some activities I had been invited to participate in that evening, so we took some photos together, and then I said good-bye to my friends and headed home. The tube had more massive delays, so I was worried I might be late, but I made it on time.

Taking photos in the museum.

When D got home, she drove myself and her old neighbour (a girl a little younger than me) to Canary Wharf to meet up with the girl’s sister before we all went ice skating. D bought me a skating ticket, and then we all went for some Starbucks hot chocolate before skating.

The skating was really fun, but it did take me a while to get used to being on skates again. I was a little unsteady at first, but I got comfortable fairly quickly, and I didn’t feel that bad because not many other people there knew how to skate. There were lots of penguins (like chairs) out for people to support themselves with. I was pretty tense, so my feet and legs got tired pretty quickly, but I never ended up falling!

When we had finished skating, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I had some delicious hibiscus water, taquitos, and sweet potatoes, plus some ice cream with hibiscus sauce for dessert. It was all really good.

Heading home we stopped at the DLR station to pick up one of the girls’ bags (because that’s where she works). Then we dropped the girls off at their house. I got to tell D all about Katimavik on the ride back to her house and found out that her parents had billeted a number of participants over the years.

Next - more exploring London.