Euro_Adventure - Day 2

Have you every shared a room with someone who snored? I used to think that my dad was loud, until this one time we took a family trip to Wyoming and were camping out near the Grand Tetons. This guy a couple of camps over snored so loud I thought he was a bear. I woke my mom up, who woke my dad up only to realize that it was human not an animal which made such a racket! All this pales in comparison to the guy who had the lower bunk of Igor’s bunk bed in the hostel.

The world championship in snoring has numerous categories, in case you are not familiar they are: Loudness, length, duration, and variation. This particular individual swept the categories. First in all, which included a bonus category of, snores so loud can wake him/herself up, this guy actually slept with head phones in to prevent the bonus.

You would think, “oh it will only last a minute or two.” 10 minutes later you find yourself contemplating how to politely wake this fellow up and tell him to get the heck out. Somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour later you have given up on your manners and decided a shoe thrown at some distance would be the most appropriate way to let this person know that they are bothering you.

In any case, we didn’t sleep particularly well, as you can imagine, and got a bit of a groggy start on London’s streets heading down towards Tower Bridge with a bouldering (climbing) gym in mind. We had a good time clambering up and down the wall as we always do. This gym even had an added bonus of serving tea and coffee if you wished. We found out a bit late that this gym had a sister gym right around the corner which we checked out, arms already fatigued from lack of sleep and an hour of climbing. Some bonus features were the long upside-down traversing route and fairly cool bouldering problems to work on.

After our 2 hours of climbing around we wanted to head over the Eye of London and take the Ferris wheel view of the city. As we began our trek we found that in fact the Eye of London is closed from January 12 – Jan 22^nd for “annual maintenance.” Boo on you London!

So after some side street walks and some deliberation we headed back over Tower Bridge to find some food and check out the sights. We didn’t go into the Tower of London but did walk around it, enjoy its high walls and the Thames waving next to us as we eat lunch at a small café just outside the walls.

We walked a bunch more and then decided to head back to the hostel to rest for a bit and see what time the movie “The Revenant” was playing near Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, planning to check them out by moon light. 

I found a small theater, which turned out to be much smaller than I thought. In fact it was a cinema for some film school in London, so there was no food, fairly uncomfortable chairs, and a smaller big screen than we spoiled Americans are used to. All that aside the film is amazing! If you haven’t seen it yet then you should. If you don’t like blood and gore then be warned there are two scenes that are pretty graphic but it really should be seen, especially on the big screen.

Igor, having seen the movie earlier in the week on his “me day,” and after a not so restful night, was trying hard just to keep his eyes open. We left the theater at 11:30pm when the movie was over and I was in desperate need of some food. We finally found one of the only open shops in London that did pizza for take away grabbed that and walked back into our hostel.