Off to Paris!

Hello Again,

Danny and I have finished our partying and site seeing in London and have just arrived in Paris. I think all of the late nights and busy days are catching up with us, so we're going to relax today and sort out some accomodations for the next couple of weeks.

London ended being a great city after accepting that it would make a huge dent in our pockets. The attitude towards alcohol is very relaxed vs. what we're used to in Canada. Beer is sold at convenience stores and drinking on the streets in tolerated. What that translated into for us was a cheap nights of drinking and a fun walk to the downtown area from our hostel. We went out last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Weekend nights are crazy in an area called Soho, which is pretty much equivalent to Richmond and Adelaide streets, except that the number of people is multiplied by 10. We managed to make it into a club called Zoo Bar on Friday, and had to settle for hanging out at Burger King (which was still rammed with people!) on Saturday. Sunday nights are pretty quiet, so we ended up walking the streets, meeting some lesbians (it was gay pride weekend) and narrowly avoiding 'booty' night at a club called Rouge.

In terms of the sites, we saw everything. We did a self guided walking tour that went by St. Paul's cathedral (London's biggest church), the Millenium bridge, Tate Modern museum (I don't claim to understand modern art), the London Eye, Parliament, Big Ben, St James Park and Buckingham palace. We splurged and went on a tour of the palace and it was amazing. They give a free audio tour that describes the important aspects of each of the rooms, and plays a cool soundtrack that pumps you up as enter each room. It was well worht it. We also saw London Tower, crossed the Tower bridge and the Globe Theatre.

The crowd at our hostel mostly consisted of younger people in London to study English. They partied on the weekends but kept it low key on the week days. We met people from Mexico, US, Russia, Spain, Italy and Poland, and everyone had the same things to say about London -- expensive! But definitely worth it if you check out all of the sites, eat smart (get the most calories/dollar) and enjoy the privledge of drinking in public :)

Next is Paris! We'll be meeting up with my brother sometime this week, and we'll probably be taking a train to Barcelona on Thursday or Friday night. One regret is that we didn't fully plan this trip out (I know a few people who are thinking "told you so") but it makes it somewhat of an adventure. And plus crashing on a bed after wandering for a few hours with a 40 lb. backpack feels so good!

One more thing -- we're changing our plans. We'll be skipping Ibiza and going to Copenhagen, Denmark instead (after Berlin). I don't know the exact reasons for this but both Danny and I thought that it was a good decision. At the very least we'll be saving on travel costs and one day of travel.

-- Mike