We awoke feeling pretty fresh in the morning of our first whole day in London. Time would tell us very quickly how quickly we would miss this part of the city. We soon checked out and crashed headlong into the world of travel options in London. In reality it was pretty easy but very daunting. We were headed for divorce before we even climbed onto our first bus with our "Oyster" card. It's just three pound for the deposit and you just load it with cash at almost any newsagent or convenience store. I can only assume it's thus named because the city on the Thames becomes 'your Oyster' with this card. Either that or you alight smelling like a local; a dirty oyster. If I can dare suggest such a thing. It was only 20 minutes or so before we were on foot again if only a few stops too early. And what a shock. New Cross is about as clean as West Newcastle (Australia) and with not many more occupied shops. Our hostel initiation started smoothly enough. We dodged what we think was the (possibly blind) safety inspector after climbing 64,000 flights to our six bed dorm. Having passed the first step in our hostel initiation we went off to explore while the Sadie broke out the nuclear-holocaust cleaning apparatis. We stumbled upon a flea market filled with junk; nice junk, the large number of locals scrounging there would suggest. The only thing more interesting was the type of 'proper' shops. It went something like this: convenience store, hair dresser, fried chicken shop, pub, secondhand furniture, fish and chip shop. And repeat. There are a lot of second hand retailers and the rest are almost entirely fast food shops. We soon realied that if every London borough is like this it's little wonder Jamie Oliver has been banging on for so long about the cheap, fatty food obsession his countrymen have developed. If you don't want take away you can buy a frozen cheese burger for 50 pence or some bullshit-low price. About a dollar Australian. We grabbed lunch at a pub nearby where I ordered chicken chow mein and Lys chicken pad thai... yeah we copped out. We dodged the bangers and mash but we weren't the only ones; there were a few locals eating the Thai-Chinese fusion menu. After a bit of web surfing Alysia fell in love with the idea of going to Stratford on Avon to see the resting place of William Shakespeare and I couldn't argue with that. In fact I insisted. We'll daytrip from London on Monday. By the time this was sorted the day was a write off and although we dare not talk about it the thought festered in our minds all afternoon and night. Not the good coffee in the funky bar across the way or the cheap fish and chips could make amends for it. I pledged to do better the next day. Ear plugs in (with band pumping in the bar below) and face mask on (with near daylight-strength light flooding in from the street ) we hit the sack.
-Sam 25/7/2010