CONSIDERING the fact that we failed to board our Eurostar train because we were too busy discussing a pompus young man named Aaron Galiger from Zoe's elementary school that insisted that French Toast doesn't exist in France (which is false) to notice that Eurostar doesn't leave from the same platform as the rest of the trains at Paris Gare du Nord station ( by the time we realized this our train was already leaving, though luckily we were allowed on the next train), AND the fact that the train, once we finally boarded it, got stuck due to an "alarm" in the Chunnel for an extra hour or so (which we concluded must be due to a "chunneled" whale in the tunnel), AND the fact that when we arrived in London at that unanticipated late-hour it took so long to find an ATM that we nearly missed the last Underground train to Brixton (near which we would be renting a room in the house of someone named Jessica for the weekend), AND the fact that after getting lost trying to find the place at one in the morning we were so tired that Faith read the house number (65) incorrectly as 66, so we knocked on the doors of the residents of both 66 and 66a who—tired confused and annoyed—told us that "no, no one named Jessica lives here,"
AND the fact that briefly we thought that perhaps we were stranded in the wrong city (London, rather than Lambeth, which was what was written on our itinerary), AND the fact that our cell phone number for Jessica would not work (and even if it did she was probably asleep that late at night anyway), AND the fact that even once we finally found Jessica and were very warmly welcomed into her home (which was surprising since we arrived like 5 hours after we were supposed to) the situation—and by "situation", I mean temporarily being stranded and homeless in the suburbs of London—did not much improve, since she had: a cat (to which I was ridiculously allergic), a heater that warmed the room up to about, give or take, the temperature of a slightly above-average hot day in the Mojave Desert, a toilet that would not flush, and a temperamental water heater that apparently only liked Zoe (because she's the only one all weekend that was lucky enough to not have to take an ice cold shower—well, her and later the other traveller staying with Jessica that weekend, who, while I was waiting for a few minutes in the other room for the water to heat up after I got up at 7am and FIXED the water heater MYSELF so that I could take a hot shower, slipped into the bathroom and took a nearly 30 minute shower before I got a chance to, which, you guessed it, used up ALL the hot water which I had worked so hard to have),
AND the fact that after our exciting weekend in London—about which I will speak later in this ridiculously long sentence—we found that the only subway line leaving Brixton at 7 in the morning on the day that we had to catch our train back to Paris had been shut down due to a "sick passenger," and therefore we had no way of reaching St. Pancras Station in time, AND the fact that once we realized that a bus to the station would take too long, we found that all the taxis at the nearest cab-hire had already been called to pick up a rowdy crew of (kinda creepy) middle-aged ravers in strange costumes still drunk, high, and who knows what else, from the night before, AND the fact that we were afraid that even if we found a cab (which we did) we wouldn't have enough pounds left to pay the driver and even if we did have enough pounds to pay the driver, it might be wasted because we still might not make it to the station in time (which we did), AND considering all kinds of other mishaps that seemed certain to ruin our trip but somehow miraculously worked out fine in the end,
it's crazy to think that Faith, Zoe, and I still had the most amazing, fun, random, adventurous, silly weekend, filled with quite a lot of tea and cookies, plenty of monuments to take odd pictures with, lots of speaking ENGLISH, (loooads of speaking English with a fake British accent, too), tons of zooming around on the Tube, a few spontaneous decisions that ended up being the highlights of the trip (like the random decision to go see "Wicked" at the theater on saturday night!), and many other adventures—the kind that are only fun when you are in the company of fun people—in London this weekend .
Pictures here ----> Foggy London Town!
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