I made the trip safely.
It seems someone has decided to call an election while I was gone. Voting is today. I am normally very proud to vote. And insistent too. But right now, I have no idea of the candidates or the issues.
I do continue to support Stephen Mandel as mayor. Unless he has done something in the past month that I don’t know about. Has he been discovered to be snatching street orphans and using them in sacrifices to the dark lord of the river? Hasn’t been covered in Europe.
I am skipping voting. I’ll do more harm than good.

I have to go to work. I had a good night’s sleep. Nothing should prevent me from going off and being a productive member of society.
Except that I haven’t driven a car in at least six weeks.
Is it like riding a bicycle?

Okay, I’m back home safe and sound. You can cease worrying. Everything seemed to go well in customs. I declared I was over the limits on a few things. They declared that they didn’t really care and appreciated my honesty.
I have stayed awake until now to prove I don’t have jetlag. Now that I have the moral high ground, I am going to bed.

Journal entries while in flight are difficult, especially east to west flights. The time change can make them appear out of order. I think I have this correct.
I have been fed. I have been watered. I have been entertained (Fracture.) I have even napped.
I have not showered. I have not brushed my teeth. I have not shaved. I’m going to look terrible when I arrive.
They showed a commercial for The Keg. I haven’t had Alberta beef in a long time. I do need to eat out tonight…
I also haven’t eaten at a McDonalds in a similar period of time. In the new millenium I didn’t eat a greasy hamburger for a year and a half. I’m tempted to try that again. The problem is that fast food is cheap and awfully convenient at times. Everything in moderation?
I had wanted to buy a book before the flight. I even knew which one I wanted, a particular novel that might not be available in Canada. With my Sistine Chapel sprint through security, I never got the chance.
Or get the chance to get my taxes returned to me for my leather jacket.

I can’t do anything right. Not even live like a homeless person.
I put my suitcase into storage and wandered around London. I always seem to gravitate to the Westminster area here, so I can say the London Eye lights up well. A person had said the Soho area, near Charing cross station, never sleeps, so I headed there. I did find some bars, but none seemed that good to me. I’m picky.
I wandered down an avenue through a park. It ended at a statue in front of a bank. A nearby map corrected me. That’s no bank! That’s where my sovereign lives.
Eventually I found myself back at the train station. I looked around for some of the hostels that supposedly litter the area. I couldn’t find any. So instead of wild partying in London, I waited in a chair at the station. Essentially like a homeless person. Which, let’s not fool ourselves, I was. The place was cold so I didn’t have much luck sleeping. I assumed it was because the station has holes in the walls for the trains, so outside air was keeping it frigid. No. I found out later the A/C was going on the whole time. I would have been better resting outside.
At 7:00 AM the luggage storage opened and the subways would start. So now all I have to do is collect my luggage and go to Heathrow. Check in closes at 11:00 AM. Plenty of time. (I later thought I should have gone around while things were opening and had a breakfast.)
Except the London Underground hates tourists. A convenient line was closed down, but it was easy to work around that. Far more difficult was that the DLR, the only line running to the hotel with my luggage, was completely shut down. It took me fifteen minutes to learn they had buses running to compensate. These were quite a bit slower.
So, get off at the correct station, hop on bus, go to hotel, get other luggage (oh, this feels heavy), get back on the bus, back to the station, then Jubilee line to the Piccadilly line that will take me to Heathrow.
Time was getting close. I arrived fifteen minutes before check-in closed. Actually, that helped me; I got to jump the queue in places. A couple who were also jumping the queue were just a bit behind me and they didn’t make it. They’re now going to Calgary.
Right now, I’m on my flight. My luggage all weighed a correct amount (barely). That is a huge relief. Of course, the only thing I’ve eaten in the past 24 hours has been a street vendor hot dog. The last drink before the flight was a coke at 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday. (They gave me some water when I boarded.)
I’m tired.

I walked around with a new friend from the Netherlands. He was amused by the hash dealers.

It looks like option two may be out. At the airport they mentioned that there was a conference and all the hostels and cheap hotels had been filled. What kind of conference fills up all the hotels in LONDON? The council of Daves?
But they also said there was luggage storage in Victoria station. Option one is looking better.
While at the airport, I changed into clothes better able to handle local weather conditions. I found in my luggage that I hadn’t closed the lid of my shampoo bottle. It got the bottom of a shoe, a rain jacket, and the leather jacket I planned to wear around London.
I wish I had a way to contact some friends here. But this is last minute.

Now comes the slog home. And it is looking sloggy. My flight to London has been delayed an hour. So I have an hour and a half before we even think of getting airborne. As long as it isn’t canceled. My flight to Edmonton isn’t until noon tomorrow so delays don’t worry me.
I should be slightly worried that I don’t have a place to stay tonight. I have two options on that front.

1. Put my luggage into storage and wander the streets of Soho all night. Living the dream. Advantages: Bragging rights. Cheap. Disadvantages: No actual sleep until I’m on the plane.
2. In Victoria station I can go to tourist information where they can recommend a hostel. Go to the hostel, use them as storage, and then go enjoy London. Advantages: More sleep. Disadvantages: Very little sleep.

It depends how I feel after the flight. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so that may affect my decision. A big issue is that I need to go to the east end of London and collect stored luggage at my old hotel and take it to Heathrow on the far west end.
Hoping the luggage is under the weight limit.

In the early evening a bunch of us climbed up the hill to go to a cliffside garden. We brought wine and cheese and had a nice time watching it get dark.
After dinner we went to a club called Lux. It’s supposedly co-owned by John Malkovich, but that might be an honorary title. There were some famous DJs there tonight, 2manydjs. I didn’t care for them, but they did make the entire club crowded. Way too crowded to enjoy anything. You couldn’t dance for all the people around. When we left at around 4:00 there was still a huge line of people waiting to get in.
That is all.

I seem to have a ongoing problem. I want to do things with other people and not just be alone. Whenever I try to do things that other people are planning for tomorrow, the other people will have changed their mind the next day. They won’t go. If I don’t do what they are planning, they will invariably have the time of their lives.
Yesterday, several people planned to go to the beach today. Okay, so I will skip the day trip I was interested in, and go to the beach too. It should be great with multiple people.
Guess how many were still interested this morning.
I still went. But I didn’t stay as long.
A beautiful Italian woman did follow me home from the train station. She needed a place to stay and was willing to go to my hostel even though I thought it was already full. It was, but she was able to get connected and find a place to stay.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but yesterday I did something I haven’t been able to for quite some time. I went swimming underwater and was still able to see clearly. Before, under those conditions my contact lenses would have floated away. I should enjoy this more.

If you are traveling alone, you have the advantage that you can do whatever you want without having to justify it. The disadvantage is you have no one to fall back on.
Today I went to the beach. It took me awhile to get going; I was trying to find anyone else interested in coming as well. No one. So, I hop on the train to Estoril and spent the afternoon there. I had other options for the destination, but after arriving, this place seemed fine. Not crowded with people, but still enough to interact with. And hopefully someone I can trust to look after my stuff while I’m swimming.
I met a pretty girl from London. She is here working as a dancer for a local casino. She thinks I should come see her show. It’s apparently like Cirque du Soleil. However it is at 11:00 at night and I’ve made plans for tonight. Tomorrow I might not get in because there are private shows.
Talking with girls makes sunbathing much more tolerable.
I’ve enjoyed Portugal. The place seems more civilized than most warm countries I’ve been to. I don’t see the ultrapoor making me feel guilty, and I feel reasonably safe among the locals. I am getting annoyed by the hash dealers who always seem to descend on me and won’t take “No” for an answer. But so far my worst experience was my late lunch in Estoril.
I ordered food, and he brought some other items that I thought were complimentary. Why would I expect to be charged for a basket of bread that was placed unasked in front of me. I suppose you can see where this is going. In the end though, it saved me money. The bait dishes were fairly cheap, and was less than the tip the waiter was going to get before he pulled this scam.
Tonight, I wish I had gone to the casino to see the show. My plan was to go to a bar, Capella, a pretty girl recommended and said she might see me there tonight. (Since found out to have a boyfriend.) But that expedition never got off the ground. People around here wandered off aimlessly and didn’t feel like going.
I might go tomorrow since the show will be done at 12:30 and things don’t seem to happen here until after 2:00 AM.

I think my guidebook has it out for me. It is now batting zero for three on guiding me to places. Two hostels that had moved, and now a restaurant that is no more.
I wanted to eat outside the hostel for one night. The food here is good, but I should try something else. My guidebook recommended a place called Bom Apetite that wasn’t too far. Off I go to find it closed down. I was able to find another place where I got grilled sardines. They were good, but messy. And the heads were still on. I don’t like when my food judges me.
In my defense, the guidebook was published in 2007. I don’t think I’m unreasonable in expecting accuracy.

I did a walking tour today. I climbed up to Castel de Sao Jorge. Nice place with good views. The Tower of Ulysses was the best part. They have a mirror on the roof that reflects everything onto a parabolic surface. Essentially it is a periscope on Lisbon that everyone in the room can use at the same time. Crystal clear picture quality too.
I walked back and tried the Elevador de Santa Justa. It’s an elevator as designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel. It’s a thrilling as it sounds. I used it to get to the Bairro Alto area where there was an English bookstore I wanted to go to. I want to go to the beach soon, and I need reading material to keep my sanity. I was going to buy a book at the Gatwick airport, but when they print the Canadian price next to the British price, they looked too expensive. Having now gone to the local bookstore, the bar on expensive has been raised.
I wandered/got lost through Bairro Alto until I got back to the hostel where I proceeded to rest.

After dinner (Gazpacho soup and three different pastas) we watched the movie 300. Around 1:00 in the morning I was told some people were going for a walk. That sounded better than doing nothing so I joined up. Actually it was a walk to the bar. But we’re all friends here.
When we got back we watched more TV. This time many episodes of the delightful children’s show “Happy Tree Friends”. Actually, no. It’s a horrible show with smiling, happy animals dying in gruesome, graphic ways. I think Lumpy has the best survival rate, given that Flippy, The Mole and Splendid are just there to cause mayhem.

I went to bed early last night. I had a real problem being coherent. I answered some email and had to dance around the fact that I couldn’t remember the names of relatives I’ve known all my life. I finally caught up on my sleep and was ready to tackle the day. A beautiful day. 29 degrees. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
So I attacked it by going on a hop-on hop-off bus tour. The problem with these tours is guessing when is a good time to get off. If you guess wrong, you’ve got half an hour wait for the next one.
For the most part I got off at good points. The first stop I bailed off at was the Marquês de Pombal. There was an interesting statue in the middle of a large traffic circle. Only after the bus was gone did I realize that this particular Arc de Triumph didn’t have an underground passage for pedestrians. So I played Frogger with traffic to get to it.
After, I walked up Parque Eduard VII where I got beautiful views. And the bus would pass by. I missed part of the bus route, but according to another passenger, I didn’t miss much.
There were three British men who acted like they were too cool for the tour. They didn’t like anything and spent time talking about drunken escapades. I was just happy to be in warm Portugal.
The next stop I got off was in Belem; A very nice place. The Torre de Belem was there, but more importantly, it had stairs going down to the river/sea. I waded a bit, but I avoided the 10 meter long beach; It had seven dead jellyfish on it. I wandered around and looked at a fabulous monument with statues of explorers. I will say this, Portugal knows how to do public art. The marble statues seem to be doing something or are larger than life. The closest thing I’ve seen to it was the Gefion statue.
After that, the only other stop I risked leaving for was the Mosterio dos Jeronimos. Honestly though, I’m getting tired of cathedrals.

After transcribing the last entry I noticed it may have been construed as a plan to steal someone else’s casserole. Sorry if there was confusion. The lack of sleep was making it hard to keep a coherent train of thought.
The people in this hostel are friendly. I was asking reception for suggestions of where to go to eat and I was invited into the kitchen for the aforementioned casserole. Good food and good company. They even tried to ply me with red wine.
My roommate has said that the regular dinner that is served each night is good, hearty and cheap. Last night was not the regular fare, even though it was the same cook. It should be even better tonight.
Breakfast was a way to fill a void, but they made a mistake in letting me pour my own orange juice. The fools! I should maybe have eaten more, because I got hungry at around 2:30. I had to degrade myself and get a lunch. I did keep some respect and made it a two scoop lunch; Lemon and Strawberry.

The Lisbon bus to the hostel was nice. A hot German lawyer sat next to me, in town to learn about Portuguese law. She’s from Munich so I got to hear what Oktoberfest is like for a resident: Not nice.
I got off my bus and walked my luggage to the hostel. It’s easier now that I’ve lightened it of souvenirs. When I got to the address, no hostel. Not even a hint of a hostel. Son of a … Every time!
The woman running the store at the address didn’t know English. But she wrote down an address and gave it to me. Maybe it is a hostel. Maybe it is a place she thinks I should stay. Maybe cousin Guido.
I headed off in the direction she’s pointed me towards. I got some other tourists with a better map to find the actual street. They’ve never heard of the place. Meanwhile it is getting dark and all the stores are closed.
I come across a payphone. I try to use it to call the hostel, but all it does is eat my money.
The address turns out to be correct. The hostel moved five months ago. The place seems nice. (One of the top ten hostels in the world as voted on hostelworld.com.) It is in a better location for everything and a lot of amenities are free. It even has a kitchen where I could cook a meal in. It looks like someone is making a casserole.
Well, I haven’t eaten since this morning. I think they eat later here. Food would be nice.

The weather here looks beautiful. It is warm and sunny. I hope this is indicative of things to come.

I feel I wasted a trip to London. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time, but I partied hard (although the only drink I bought the entire time was a water.) Most nights felt like I got four hours of sleep. With that grueling schedule I barely saw any of the actual city. It didn’t help that the hotel was so far away from anything that it took half an hour minimum to get anywhere. And when I did go out during the day I was dazed from lack of sleep.
I should have tried taking one of the bus tours again.
In a way this felt like the opposite of Berlin. There I did the culture stuff and didn’t party much.
I liked partying better. But it is easier to do on a weekend and where there are people you know. I won’t be able to say that about Portugal. But I’m treating this as my rest week.
I did get to have six hours of sleep last night, so I’m feeling quite alert right now. I also spent quite a bit of time rearranging my luggage so that weight is balanced better, and I can put heavy things in my carry-on easily. That should help me on my Canada flight. I’m confused about how this Portugal flights’ weight rules work. I hope I’ve got them right.

I had barely any sleep and I don’t seem to be making progress. I planned to leave the party earlier tonight. It was a low-key Sunday event, so it was expected. But I was having such a heavenly time that I lost track of how late it was. The people I wanted to carpool with weren’t interested in proper bedtimes. I reached the underground just as it shut down. Luckily I discovered that London has late night buses to compensate. There was one nearby that would take me to the same tube stop. Unluckily that took an hour. I did get to sit at the front of the top level of a double decker bus.
I went downtown (nebulous as that is) yesterday afternoon) in search of an internet café. I popped into interesting stores too. I saw a copy of season two of “The IT crowd” for sale. The first episode of that season aired right before I left on this vacation. I would have gotten it right there, but I’m pretty sure Europe DVDs don’t play well with North American players.
I bit the bullet and purchased Portugal tickets. It gives me a sense of relief to have a plan again. I wasn’t able to get them as cheaply as I had heard. But I decided to ignore the expense and have fun. (Like the Contiki tour guide said: “A vacation is a very poor investment.”)
Even though I would like to go home and fool around on the computer.
Some new friends had said they were going to Camden market. I HAD to do internet work so I couldn’t go with them. I popped by afterwards; A nice area with a lot of goth stores. There are two sets of people there, actual goths and tourists taking pictures. I never found my friends, but I did see their pictures later and it looks like they knew what to do there.

There was a girl I was flirting with (inasmuch as I can flirt) last night. I should have kissed her. I can never tell when it is appropriate to, and end up never trying.
I closed down the bar. It didn’t work out well. I got there before midnight and it shut down at 6:00 AM. My hotel is far away from anything, so taxis are prohibitively expensive. And the underground doesn’t start until 7:00 AM. So I waited for an hour, then spent half an hour tubing (and nearly falling asleep) to get back. I didn’t get to bed until 8:00 AM. I didn’t sleep well and was up at 10:45 for breakfast. I’m awake now, so I won’t be sleeping.
I’m very stressed about tomorrow. I am not sure what I will be doing. It just looks expensive. And what to do with luggage? I might have to take a long trip by tube tomorrow to Heathrow just to put the suitcases into storage.

Last night was fun. I found some other people going to the same club so we were able to carpool via taxi. At the club I saw some familiar faces and got reacquainted with old friends. Some I didn’t even expect. I guess London is a global crossroads.
I went home at 4:30 in the morning. The cab driver didn’t really know where he was going and got lost. I did get to cross Tower bridge. It looks different from that angle. Eventually at 5:00 in the morning I got to bed.
I got out of the hotel at 11:00 and took the tube downtown. I found internet access in a library and tried to figure out the next leg of my vacation. It is looking more expensive to fly to Portugal than I thought. I don’t even know what airports they are talking about. I’m going to consult with the hotel to better plan this out.
I spent the rest of the day wandering about. I did some shopping, but nothing too exciting. I’ll probably go to a club again tonight.

That was an exhausting morning. I took my heavy suitcase on two tube routes. Just so I could put it into storage for an hour and a half. I wanted to rescue my other suitcase, but this late in the season, the Contiki office doesn´t open until 11:00. So I put my suitcase into a hotel storage and wandered the streets of London. I mostly spent time looking through book stores, trying to find a book unavailable in Canada. The weather is very nice though.
When Contiki opened, I claimed both my suitcases. With them I explored four different tube trains to get to my hotel. That was hell. It was getting hot, the bags were heavy, stairs were steep, and an escalator I needed had broken. I also got off at the wrong tube stop. But I finally got there at 12:30.
I went out and met some friends. I’m now resting before I go grab some dinner. There is a club, Mass, I want to go to tonight. Hopefully it will be fun. At least getting there will be easier. I can only assume the underground is more pleasant without suitcases.

The Chunnel was really a non-event. I might even have wasted it. I was sleepy so I closed my eyes and may have napped. I remember watching the sun rise while going over 200kph. Then I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I was in a tunnel. Nothing to see here, so the eyes shut again. Now I’m seeing the English countryside. A fellow passenger summarized it nicely: “The houses are ugly. This must be Britain.”

I didn’t sleep well, but I did sleep. The room was fairly empty with just two Norwegians. I’m sort of wishing that I had gone all the way to Paris just so I could have slept longer.
Now I’m on the train, waiting in Brussels. Soon it will start and I’ll be Chunnel bound. Security was high. It was almost like flying.

The train from Denmark got it down to twenty minutes late. London here I come.
Go night night now. Stress has made me sleepy.