London Trip and a Great 21st
Wednesday June 20, 2007

         I'm at INSA, the university, right now so I can't upload any pictures of London yet. But trust me, there are a lot, I took about 200 pictures. Mostly on Saturday because that's when me and Chris started touring around London.
         I'd like to give a disclaimer before I start discussing my trip. I would like eveyrone to know, I do not normally drink in this fashion and only did so because it was my 21st. No accusations of alcoholism or problem drinker should be told to me....beside the fact that it seemed like a lot of people spend their days in London like this.
         Anyway, so I started off the morning of Friday 16th, my birthday. My flight was around 11:35 and I woke up at 7:30 hoping that the computer lab at the dorms would be open. Alas, they were not. See the computer lab in the dorm closes at 9:30pm and I still have not determined when they open up. So, all I know is they do not open up at 8:00am or earlier. My problem was that I did not really know at all how to get to the airport. I knew it wasn't far though and felt (especially given the security in France) that I would have more than plenty of time once I got to the Airport. I waited around in the dorms, packing and such, thinking that the computer lab would probably open up at 8:00am because....it seemed like a logical time to me for a computer lab to open. It did not. At about 8:05 perhaps I realized that it was not going to open and I didn't have enough time to sit around waiting until it did. As far as I know it doesn't open until 12:00.
         I headed out and walked to the closest bus stop. Luckily almost every bus stop in Toulouse has a map of the entire city's bus route. I could see on the map that there was a line that went out to the airport, the problem was it only stopped downtown so I would have to head their first. I planned out my route. I would take the 24 down to the Capitole, take the 1 subway (LOL, the only subway in Toulouse) to Place de Belfort where it appeared one of the stops for the airport shuttle stopped. I would then be on my way to the airport and off to London. My plan seemed to be working fine...I made it to Place de Belfort. I quickly looked around as fast as I could trying to find a bus stop that appeared to be the route I was going to take. I found none. This next section will be called panic.
         So...I started to get worried. It was probably around 9:00 at this time and I still had no idea where I was supposed to take the shuttle. I looked a map at one of the bus stops. I still was not quite sure but I felt I had a pretty good idea where one was. I walked down Denfert-Rochereau at a paniced pace. Luckily I was only taking my backpack, this would have been painful with actual luggage. I walked down the street, looking at every busstop along the way to see if it went to the airport, then arrived at Boulevard d'Arcole. I walked along it to the south looking at every bus stop, hoping hoping hoping. I looked at every map to see where I was, how far I had gone and if I could see anything. I finally gave up in that direction and started heading back the opposite way. I made it about as far going the other direction away from Denfert-Rochereau. I stopped almost overwhelmed with panic.
         I swallowed my pride and figured I had a number of one of the guys at INSA, Florian, that was there to help out the International students. I hadn't wanted to call him earlier because it was early and I didn't want to wake him up. But I was freaking out and it was late enough I figured I'd call him. I think I did wake him up but it's all good. He speaks english fairly well but on a phone it's hard to make out a heavy French accent. Another problem was the fact that my phone didn't have very many minutes on it. Luckily I am actually one of the few people who do have minutes on my phone. I talked to him in a paniced voice which I'm guessing made it even harder for him to understand me. He told me that the airport shuttle wasn't like a normal Toulouse bus which I didn't know. He didn't know where I was at all but I definantly heard him tell me the shuttle stopped at Jean Jaurés. This made me upset because it was back the way I came heading in the direction I had been walking before. Anyway, I made it to the Jean Jaurés metro stop and looked around. I didn't immediately see it but eventually saw the most beautiful and happy airport shuttle sign I've ever seen. Another thing that made me REALLY upset was that another of the shuttle's stops was right where I had been talking to Florian on the phone earlier. I was also still freaking out because it was now around 10:10 or so. My flight was leaving in an hour and 20 minutes. I was freaking out on the bus because every stop was taking too long and I had to get going, luckily there were only three. I had almost accepted at this point that I was going to miss my flight. After the last stop the shuttle got to the airport practically 10 minutes later. I was so releived, I thought it was going to be longer. I get out and rush as quick as I can to the EasyJet check out point. Luckily the Toulouse airport doesn't have any kind of signs to help you locate individual check outs. I finally find an EasyJet stand and I ask him where the check-out stand is. He asked me what flight I was taking and I said to London Gatwick. He gave me a strange look and said, that flight's already left, there's a flight that leaves in two hours that goes to Bristol. I almost started to lose it. I was almost positive of the time, this shouldn't be happening! I started getting worried and said, no no no, here's my booking reference number, I'm pretty sure it leaves at 11:35. After a couple grueling minutes of him looking at his computer and my reference number he said, oh sorry, you're right, well the check-out's right over there. I stood in a pretty small line for the Check-out (in Gatwick there had been no line) and went through less than 2 minutes worth of security. I made it to the gate around 10:50 with plenty of time and the flight actually left about 20 minutes late anyway. I guess I'm my father's son, freaking out about being late to things, it's all good though. I was so happy.
         Wow, I've written a lot and haven't even gotten to London yet. I just wanted to emphasize how freaked out I was leaving. It almost compares to how much I was on the way back which I'll get to. Anyway, the plane ride was fairly uneventful. I wanted to get a beer on the plane 'cause it was my birthday but I figured noon was perhaps a little too early to get started celebrating. I saw a nuclear power plant which I took a picture of. France runs about 70% of their energy on nuclear power.
         Once I made it to the airport I took a train to London, since Gatwick is around 30 miles south of London. I got to Victoria station and, as per Chris's instructions, got a full day subway pass and took the subway to Warren Street. I actually met a guy from Austin leaving the subway station. I was wearing my "Keep Austin Weird" shirt and he saw it. That was pretty cool. I would've talked longer but I was excited to see Chris. I called him and met him immediately; he was waiting at a pub not far away. He wished me happy birthday and we were off. We headed straight to the first of many pubs that were to come. He figured he'd buy me a pint and we'd sit down and talk. Chris had been nice enough to be looking up stuff we could do together while I was there, mostly a list of pubs. We sat there planning things, he talked to me about his study abroad program so far, I told him about mine, and so forth. We headed over to his dorm after out pints were finished and I put all my stuff away. He spent a little bit of time looking up directions to some places and then we headed out to eat. We went to another pub close by and had another pint and I got me some Fish and Chips.
         We went back to the dorm for a second to get some stuff and met up with a guy there named Jonee...not sure how you spell it; it was an odd name. So we left, Chris wanted to show me this cool cigar shop that only selled cubans. We took a subway and had to some walking to find it. It was pretty neat but rediculously expensive. Chris loves his cigars though. He bought a 20 pound (40 dollar) cigar as celebration of my birthday. Well, he said that, but he had actually been wanting to smoke that particular kind of cigar for years. We headed off to another pub and got another pint. (Keep in mind that these are all like 30 minutes to an hour apart. I didn't get drunk until the end.) We stayed there chattin' for a bit with Jonee. We decided it was time for another pub, we walked aways, passed by Pickadilly circus, saw some other pretty cool stuff, and finally made it to where the pub was supposed to be. It wasn't, but in London pubs are NOT few and far between. We headed around and saw another pretty cool pub and stopped in and had a pint. Time doesn't pass as by fast when writing so this seems bad.
         We figured at that point we were hungry again, especially Jonee, so we'd go to another pub and sit down and eat. This time I got Saus and Mash, which is just sausage, on top of mashed potatoes, slathered in gravy. It was SOOO good. I got another pint that I said at randomly off a number the waitress listed off. She ended up giving me cider which tasted more like vomit to me than I've tasted since the last time I vomited. I don't remember when that was. She was actually really nice and let me get a pint of regular ale. We walked around for a bit after that but I guess Jonee was still jet-lagged or something because he wanted to go back to the dorm and go to sleep. We went back with him and stayed in the dorm for a couple of minutes. We then went out and headed to another pub. We had several pints there and met up with a couple girls who are at the program with Chris. They came and left; they had to leave early because they were taking a day trip the next morning and needed to get up early. Me and Chris had several more pints and that's around when things get blurry. The bar closed and the metro stops weren't open any more so we had to walk home. It wasn't that bad, we weren't more than a couple of miles from our dorm anyway. We walked back and went to sleep.
         We slept in 'til about 11:00. I didn't want to waste my day in London too much so I got up and we stayed in the dorm for a bit. That's when I wrote my last post and uploaded pictures 'cause I had internet access that wasn't slow and wasn't firewalled disabling me from uploading anything. We left and went to a pub to have some breakfast. Good ole fashioned breakfast, I had some more Saus and Mash. I believe this was the only pub we went to and didn't have a pint. I figure there's some rule about drinking before noon even if it is your 21st birthday weekend in London. We decided we wanted to see the British museum so went off walking towards it. It was awesome. They have SO much stuff there. It's rediculous, any place the British have reigned over they pretty much stole everything they could and took it back to this museum. They had the Rosetta Stone there for crying out loud. They had, numerous amounts of relics, tombs from egypt, different statues, and they have practically every remaining relic from the parthenon. The parthenon is basically stripped down to nothing but it's strucure. The British Museum has everything, the sides of it, statues from the triangular peaks at the top, everything basically. Most of my pictures of the day came from this place. I wanted to take lots of pretty pictures of Jewelry from ancient egypt and ancient greece to show to Mommy.
         We left the museum after several hours, not even seeing nearly half of the place, and we had been going through fairly quickly. We had originally planned on going to another museum after that one but we ended up spending so much time at that one that by the time we got out of it we wouldn't have had much time at any other museum because they close pretty early. We left, stopped by a pub for a pint and planning, and then walked a LONG way. We passed by the BBC headquarters, walked along the Thimes for a while looking along it. We were headed to parliament and Big Ben because I wanted to see it and Chris had heard of a really cool pub outside of it where a lot of members of parliament go to drink, called the Red Lion. We saw the London Eye which now has a huge advertisement for Silver Surfer on it. I don't know how much that movie paid to put that advertisement up there but it makes the Eye look so must less cool. I'm really suprised that they allowed them to do it. I guess they put different kind of advertisements up there nowadays. We stopped by a tribute to all british royal airforce who died during World War II which Chris was really interested in and stopped by Big Ben and looked around. It's all so beautiful it's amazing. We stopped in at the Red Lion, had two more pints and ate dinner/lunch. We, amazingly, met more people from Austin there. Chris was wearing his Texas Engineering shirt and they saw it. I just think it's amazing I happened to meet two people from Austin while in London. I wonder how many more I passed who didn't notice me or Chris's shirts. Chris is obsessed with Churchill so we walked by his statue and I got some pictures of Chris and Churchill. Amazingly, they have a big statue of Abraham Lincoln right next to Big Ben. I was amazed. We stared at it perplexed for a bit and then headed off. We did some more sightseeing around Big Ben. Wondered a while, then headed off much farther north and went to a pub that Chris had heard of.
         This pub stood out in my mind because it was the only pint I didn't enjoy while in London. It was a horrible ambience as well. I was disappointed. Anyway, we wondered around for a bit taking in the sights and went to another pub we saw. We hung out for there a bit and met some British guys and some American girls. We talked with them for a bit until the pub closed. They wanted to go to a club where they could keep drinking. I basically just wanted to go home at that point since it was getting late and my flight left around 7:00 the next morning but Chris wanted to go with it and do whatever because he wanted us to celebrate as much as possible. I said OK, so we all got in a taxi and drove for a really long time until we got to this club. We got in line, then had to go through a more strict line of security than I have ever been through even at airports. After we got through all of that me and Chris each owed 17 pounds. Good God. Chris payed for it, I don't know if he wants me to pay back since it was his idea and I hadn't wanted to go in the first place.
         As the night went on, I was stupid and had too many to drink and got fairly drunk. It was getting really late and I had to leave. I forced Chris to leave with me since I didn't have keys in his dorm and would have had no way to give them back to him once I got there. So we found out where we were on the map and walked to the dorm. I spent about two seconds getting all my stuff together, found out how to walk to Victoria Train station since the metros weren't running and took off as fast as I could. I was in no shape to be doing this. I was so stupid. I wasn't wasted or anything but I had been drinking and even worse had stayed up all night. It was silly. Anyway, I started walking and without a map it was really hard. I kept walking block after block without seeing the street that I should have seen by that point. I was getting frustrated and when a taxi came by and could obviously see my confused look I gave in to walking since I was again, just as in Toulouse, running out of time. I got in and he took me to Victoria station but since I didn't have any money on me he had to take me to a ATM first. He took me to one that was out then took me to another that was inside Victoria Station, I should have ran off, that bill was WAY too much. I paid him then headed off for the train. The train left soon after I got on it which was good and I made it to the airport. I was SO tired. I fell asleep waiting for the plane to arrive and almost missed the flight. I was so out of it, not drunk at all anymore but so tired from staying up all night. I don't remember the plane ride at all. The second I got on it I fell asleep and woke up when the plane landed. I then got onto the airport shuttle to downtown. Took the metro back to Capitole and then took a bus back near my dorm. I got in my bed and slept for about 10 hours. It was wonderful. I was amazed I was able to go sleep that night after that.
         Anyway, that was my weekend. Exciting, terrifying, stupid. But I had a lot of fun and was so glad I did go. Again, I want to remind everyone that that is not at all how I normally drink. Just to make sure everyone's clear. Writing that I kept thinking, wow, that's bad. But don't worry. Never do I ever drink during the day and hardly ever that much at night. That was a once in a lifetime weekend. The week has been fairly uneventful. I booked my plane for Amsterdam this weekend. I think this will be the last trip I take while in France. It is too expensive on top of all the living costs involved with the Euro the way it is. I'll find a way to make the best of it. Have fun everyone. And remember, looking back on my weekend just remember: I didn't let those loyalist redcoats ruin my colonial heritage! Good night, and good luck.