When I last left off, I had just gone through security at Bruxelles-Midi train station, walked across a line marked "UK Border" and gotten my passport stamped by British customs agents. When I finally got through all that business and boarded the Eurostar, I found that there was assigned seating. I just took a seat I thought looked appealing, as if I were on the ICE, until the people who already had that seat bumped me out, and pointed on my ticket where my seat number is. Remember this if you ever book travel on the Eurostar!
Finally the Eurostar took off, it was pretty dark outside, so I was buried in "Iberia," the book I brought, for most of the time. The train stopped once, in Lille, France, during this entire stretch from Brussels to London. This was the first time I'd ever been in France, although I think it "doesn't count" since I never stepped off the train. Eventually it reached Calais which is the closest point to the UK and the location of the France end of the Chunnel. Now, all the trains I've been on during this trip, ICE, EC, IC, and the Eurostar before this point, had been in and out of so many tunnels, so when we entered a tunnel at this point I thought nothing of it. But when the train climbed back up into the 200s km/h, and the tunnel just kept going on and on for 15-20 minutes total, it started to hit me that we were in the famous Chunnel.
During most of that ride I tried to take some pictures of the French countryside, but they were all garbage. The sun hadn't finished rising so it was still pretty dim on my side, so any photo I took inevitably had too much reflection of the interior lights, or it was too blurry due to the train's incredible speed, or both.
By the time we emerged from the Chunnel, it was broad daylight out and I got to watch the English countryside go by for awhile until the Eurostar finally slowed down and pulled into St. Pancras International station in London.
Two Eurostar trains parked in St. Pancras International. The one on the right is the one I rode in from Brussels.
After a really long walk out of the station, I got a coffee from a café and then went back to ride somewhere on the famous London Tube. Navigating the Tube was not so easy as other systems I'd recently been on. The map looked like any other, with color-coded lines, but unlike most other cities, the routes had actual names like "Bakerloo" and "Jubilee" whereas most other cities will just make do with numbers or letter-number combinations. And also, while other cities will have the route numbers right there on the map next to the lines, here they're just listed on the side with their corresponding colors, which can be frustratingly hard to distinguish when the lights are dim, which they often are.
I eventually figured out what train would get me somewhere closer to downtown, and then rode not the first but the second that came by. When I saw my first Tube train I was rather shocked at how packed it was with so many people crammed in it! The next had more room to move, though, and pretty soon I was in the middle of London. One of the first things I saw outside was a pub. It was still pretty early, but why not have a single pint now?
I went into this pub and was elated to discover that they had Sharp's Doom Bar on tap! The last time I visited England--the Liverpool/Manchester trip in 2015--the very last ale I had on English shores was Doom Bar at a pub that served cask-pulled ales. It was definitely my favorite beer of that whole trip. So in this place in London, they had Doom Bar, and it was also cask-pulled. What do I mean by cask-pulled? Well, as a bartender explained it during that last trip, most beer taps you see are actually just electric switches; flip the switch and a pump turns on. If a beer is "cask-pulled" then it's pumped manually the old-fashioned way: the bartender repeatedly pulls the handle, pumping the ale out of the cask, and it is this pumping that makes the ale super frothy, one of the characteristics I love the most about English bitters.
Then it was time to go hit up the requisite touristy stuff. Much like the Eiffel Tower and the Coliseum, I've never had any real big desire to see stuff like Big Ben or the Tower Bridge, having seen a zillion or so pictures of these things since the day I was born. But, I'm here now, so I kinda have to, right? I walked south toward the River Thames where I found Westminster Abbey. I didn't go in then; I planned to, but ended up getting diverted. I had a nice sandwich from a kiosk outside, then continued the trek south toward the river. All the signs said that Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament were in this direction, but all I could see was this scaffolding-covered monstrosity. That's not Big Ben, is it? I thought.
Yep, it was. Renovations won't be done until 2021.
I really just wandered aimlessly that afternoon. I saw a few famous places from a distance, like the London Eye and Tower Bridge. I passed by Southwark Cathedral and, thanks to the announcements I heard on the Tube, discovered that Southwark is pronounced "Sutherk." I wanted to step inside Westminster Abbey but got on the Tube going the wrong direction. I followed some signs directing me to Shakespeare's Globe, but couldn't find it. Then after some time on another Tube train I found I was near Buckingham Palace, so I stepped off there, walked through a park, and found the palace.
Changing of the guard is done at 11:30 am, so I definitely missed that.
Next I went to Baker Street and decided now was a good time to rest my weary legs and feet in a pub, which I did. It was a pub called The Globe where I had a pretty good lager. With the afternoon winding down, and me out of ideas of stuff to do, I now decided to try to find the night's hostel, called Queen Elizabeth Chelsea. During an earlier Starbucks stop I had consulted the map on my phone and determined the right Tube station to step off at was Fulham Broadway.
Several months earlier, when I was on my way home from the Lightning in a Bottle festival in California, I rode a charter bus to LAX airport and thought it surreal to see mundane exit signs with famous, iconic street names on them like "Mulholland Dr" and "Sunset Blvd." Riding this last Tube train, I felt the same way as I looked at the route map and saw names like "Whitechapel," "Notting Hill Gate," and "Hammersmith."
I had a pretty good salad for dinner at Fulham Broadway station. I could be wrong but I think it was at Pret-a-Manger. Then I had a photo to take of one more famous place...
This is Stamford Bridge Stadium, the home of the Premier League soccer team, Chelsea FC. I had wanted to do similar photo captures of other such arenas, like White Hart Lane, but I just didn't have time. Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford (home of Manchester United) are the only two Premier League stadiums I've actually seen with my own eyes.
My last stop before the hostel was a nice upscale brewpub called The Butcher's Hook. This place was probably closer to Stamford Bridge than my car was parked to Cowboys Stadium last June. They had the typical selection of beers/ales on tap, but they also had a bitter brown ale they actually brewed there themselves. I had a pint and it was good. This isn't an essential stop by any means, but if you happen to be in the area you'd be making a wise decision by stopping in.
Last stop: the hostel, Queen Elizabeth Chelsea. This place was not only a hostel but a bar as well! By then I was pretty much sick of beer for the day, but they had John Smith's on tap, and I had loved that stuff when I was in Liverpool, so I had to had to have a pint. Even if I felt like I was forcing it down. The staff there, who managed the hostel and worked the bar, were very friendly and helpful. I had an early flight out of Stansted the next morning and they explained exactly what I would have to do to get there on time.
The building was quite old, unlike the place I'd spent the last night in Brussels. In fact, there were signs on the bathroom walls saying to be careful not to clog the pipes, because they "are older than your great-grandparents." Even so, they had free WiFi, which is an essential anywhere. I got to my bedroom which was little different than the one in Amsterdam, except this time I had a bottom bunk.
Tuesday morning, the trip was pretty much over and all that was left was to go home. While I had journeyed all the way to London on trains, I wanted to get home quickly and cheaply, so I booked a pair of Ryanair flights. The first was from London-Stansted to Dublin, and then directly from Dublin to Stuttgart. Stansted isn't actually in London, in fact it isn't exactly close to it, making getting there before dawn a challenge. As I mentioned before, the staff at the hostel had shown me how to get there; I had to drag myself out of bed at 3:30 in the morning, spend about 15 minutes standing around a bus stop. This bus stop was in a neighborhood full of nearly-identical brownstone homes. Remember how Brussels' Anderlecht reminded me of Brooklyn or Queens? Well, Chelsea didn't just remind me of those places, it's practically a carbon copy.
Eventually the night bus pulled up, and I spent a little while riding that to the Victoria motor coach station where I got a sausage roll and a banana for breakfast. And some coffee, of course, and I have to say a few things about different countries' approaches to coffee.
In Germany if you buy a coffee it's usually in a smaller amount than you'd get in the US or the UK, and while you can usually get milk or cream, not everywhere offers sweetener that isn't sugar. Some places do, and when I'm in a place with sweetener tablets available, I take two or three more for the road, just in case. Sometimes I don't even need them, though, since I've weaned myself off sweeteners enough that an unsweetened coffee with a little cream tastes tolerable. You can usually get cream ("Sahne") which I prefer over "Kaffee mit Milch" which just has a cup of whole milk in it.
The British are famously obsessed with tea, which probably explains why they can't get their shit together when it comes to coffee. When I returned from Liverpool three years ago someone told me that before Starbucks opened their doors in the UK, coffee in that country was "garbage." Things haven't improved much on this front, not just the coffee's unimpressive taste but also the cream/milk situation. You can get "white coffee" which, well, just has a cup of milk (presumably whole milk) dumped in it. Or you can just order it black and add your own, but I find that half-and-half pretty much doesn't exist there. At most places they just have skim, 2%, or whole milk, but even those aren't ubiquitous. The place where I got breakfast only had skim milk, so I had to make do with that. The Starbucks where I got my second cup didn't have any milk on the side, so I had to order it black and then go back to the first place for their skim milk.
So anyway, my coach ride cost, I think, £12. It took off at 5:30 and got me to Stansted at ~7:15. Like I said, it's not exactly close, and the bus did make a few stops in downtown London. I did read more of James Michener's Spanish travels for awhile during the ride, but eventually I just drifted off to sleep, which was pretty amazing considering I already had two cups of coffee in me. I had two flights ahead of me: Stansted-Dublin and Dublin-Stuttgart, both on Ryanair.
The first flight was cramped and uncomfortable--this is Ryanair, after all--but mercifully short since it was only to Dublin. I had to go through passport control, of course. While in the Dublin airport I stopped by a bar and had a Guinness Hop House Lager which I liked a lot better than that Guinness Blonde they sell back in the States. At this same bar I also got an Irish Coffee, and since I'd encountered this drink served so many different ways, I had to ask how it was made, reasoning that since this was Ireland they'd know better than anyone else. And so, the correct ingredients: coffee, Jameson Irish Whiskey, whipped cream, brown sugar, chocolate sprinkles. It must also be served in a thick glass mug made for such hot drinks.
All that was left by that point was the flight back to Stuttgart. It was, of course, cramped and uncomfortable. I could barely move a muscle the whole time, and the two hours and change just seemed to drag infinitely. And then, after landing back in Germany it was another bit of a wait in line to get my passport stamped *again* because Ireland isn't in the Schengen area...
Well, that was a wrap. Great trip overall; not only did I get to see two cities and one country I'd never visited before, it also warmed me up to the idea of staying in hostels, which I've done in almost every European city I've visited since then. Six months later I'd be doing something similar to this in Maastricht and Luxembourg.
Other articles in this series:
