Day 2, 9 January 2012

Harlingford Hotel, London. 8:27 UTC. Day 2.

Just to clarify, I woke up in the hostel but am now writing this [the morning of the 10th about the morning/day of the 9th] in the Harlingford Hotel, but I'll get there. 

It might’ve been the eerie silence that woke me but whatever it was, I awoke to an empty room. The note on the hostel guidelines stirred in my mind: Check-out time is always 10am! I hastened to where I placed my alarm clock. It was gone. I tore off my sheets. The clock was now where my feet had been. Odd. Did I turn it off and throw it under the sheet without remembering, or had a roommate shut it off? Well I couldn’t ask. I checked the time: 9:45.

I went in high gear. Guess I’d take a shower later, though my hair definitely spoke volumes of my

bed-headedness. I made it down by 10:00 with minutes to spare and spent a few minutes with the London map my dad had given me at the airport. The Sherlock Holmes Museum on 221B Baker Street. That was where I wanted to go. I lugged my luggage to the nearby Harlingford Hotel, where my UC Education Study Abroad program had reserved rooms for me and other students for two nights, and luckily found it easy to leave my duffel bag there til the 14:00 check-in.

            Despite taking initiative to find my way with just a map, somehow time and experience had to prove that my way was the harder way of learning streets. I made my way to the Regents Canal, turned back, and somehow found myself at the door of the land of (Café) Oz. I ordered a meat-dominated, egg-secondary Oz breakfast and as the waiter asked if I’d like ketchup, I had a moment when all the listening to Jason the street artist last night paid off. I tried the British accent. I didn’t sound half-bad, ya know—I merely said “Ah, ketchup, yes, thank yu” but hey, it was something. After leaving an unexpected tip (to them it was unexpected and later I realized that it was unnecessary as a student…American habits die hard, though), I then was off on my walking-through-London journey. I picked a direction I figured was corresponding to the map, Pentonville Road. The whole street happened to go at some point into Regents Park and then to the SH Museum. I just didn’t know it was the other way.

            After a 40-minute walk, I turned back around, decided to take a rest on a bench in the St. Pancras International Station, and shortly resumed my journey counterintuitive to the map. This is where I learned to read the map upside down. Going east but perceiving my journey on the map as west somehow made me eventually find a place lined with trees and bigger than any park I’ve ever been in: Regents Park.

            By now, around 13:15, my revised destination was Regents Park, given time constraints. But honestly, this was the refreshing sight-seeing I needed: I walked along the Park’s diameter (the centerline sidewalk), passing fountains, dogs, two cafés, countless benches, and to my utter astonishment and joy, countless runners too. I had read that there was to be a London Marathon in the middle of Spring. Maybe this was the training ground. I mean, just by walking, it took twenty minutes to walk one way on just the diameter. This park even held roughly fifteen sports fields.

            I made it back to the hotel, found myself given a single room (first time, apart from home life, having one), showered, and met the other ten students in the University of Kent-University of East Anglia UC program group. At this point I realized that I was the only guy—the single room now made sense. After a fun guess-what-British-character-name-is-on-my-back game (I was Hermione Granger, but funny story, the first question I asked was “Am I Sherlock Holmes?” and the girl I asked happened to be just that. Oh the irony.), the program manager and assistant sat us down to a 90-minute presentation of understanding and getting oriented in the study abroad. Afterwards, we all went out to dinner and as everyone else retired for the evening, RyAnn, Amelia, and I went to a pub on Russell Square a block from the hotel, the Lord John Russell. I ordered what they did, half-pint of cider. I didn’t feel like anything heavy. We returned an hour later and I settled down for the night in my single.

            I just wrote all this upon getting up a bit early in the room. Now it’s breakfast.