Days 1-5

Days 1-3: Chicago
Since my flight to England was from Chicago O’Hare, I hitched a ride with Niamh and Todd on Tuesday the 21^st and spent a few days in Chicago. 

On Wednesday I had the full day to either relax or explore, so I did a bit of both.  I decided to go for a long walk, and ended up getting lost and taking an even longer one!  I walked on Ashland to Milwaukee, then took Milwaukee to what I thought was going to be Damen, but accidentally wound up on North.  For some reason I thought that North must run in the same direction as Damen, so I thought I’d eventually wind up on Chicago ave, so I walked along North until I saw Humboldt Park and realized I was going the completely wrong direction.  I checked my map and then took California to Chicago, then walked back towards Ashland to get back home.  I stopped at the Bleeding Heart Bakery to pick up a latte (to warm my numb hands!) and a yummy cheesecake brownie along the way back to their apartment.  Since that night Niamh had class, Todd and I went to the restaurant Han 202 for dinner.  It was pretty delicious.  I highly recommend the pork dumplings as an appetizer—so good!  The rest of the night included watching Top Chef and drinking Cupcake wine. 

On Thursday I spent the day lounging around their apartment and slowly repacking my things.  My flight was scheduled to leave close to 10:00 pm, so at around 5:00 pm I walked up to Swim Café on Chicago to pick up a sandwich to go (Turkey and Cranberry~) before I left for the airport.  Niamh came home and helped me get the last of my stuff together (thankfully, because I was getting thoroughly frustrated packing that stupid backpack), then brought me to the train metro station to catch a train to O’Hare.
Taking the train wasn’t terrible, but lugging around that wretched backpack and hauling it on my back through the airport before dumping it at the baggage check-in was awful.  I was glad to be rid of it.  Anyway, despite the winter storm warnings, my plane left on time.  I was flying with Scandinavian Airlines and was surrounded by people speaking languages I had no hope of understanding, and I thought to myself, “So it begins.”  Fortunately the first two countries on my list speak both languages I can speak, but after I leave France I’ll be completely out of my comfort zone (linguistically, that is).

The plane ride wasn’t horrible, but the smells of the airplane food made me feel extremely sick, so until dinner was completely over with I couldn’t get comfortable.  I did sleep a few hours though, so when my flight arrived in Copenhagen I wasn’t in terrible condition.  Catching the plane from Copenhagen was easy and uneventful (which was definitely not a bad thing).  I took a couple of typical photos of clouds during the flight—no shame.

Day 4:  Arrive in London

My plane landed at Heathrow on Friday the 25^th at about 4:00 pm England time (10:00 am Minnesota time).   My aunt Kathleen met me at the airport, and after a couple of hours of lugging my ridiculous backpack and gear through trains and metro stops, we finally made it to their place in Wanstead.  Since I was pretty exhausted from the flight, the lack of sleep, and the stress that goes along with packing for a trip and catching an international flight, I was more than happy to stay in watching television.  Sinead introduced me to the show “The Only Way is Essex,” which is kind of like England’s version of Jersey Shore, and honestly it was kind of terrible but also extremely entertaining.  Anyway, despite the lack of sleep, I didn’t end up getting to sleep until around 2 or 3 am that night.

Day 5:  The Olympic Village

Finally caught up!  Today Kathleen, Sinead, and I went to the Olympic Village (which, for those of you who don’t know, is where the Olympics are being held this summer).  Kathleen had come to the (very right) conclusion that there was no way I was going to be able to travel around Europe with that abominable back pack, so the goal of our outing to the Olympic Village was to find a replacement for it.  So we did a bit of shopping!  I went to Primark for the first time!  Under normal circumstances I would have bought a ton of clothes from there but since I’m trying to be responsible with my money I decided against it.  I did, however, splurge at Boots and bought a few make up items and the perfume I wear (which is practically impossible to find in the states) and perfume for my mother.  All of it was way cheaper than make up and perfume in the states though, so I don’t feel too terrible about it.  After Boots we walked around a bit outside and took a look at the stadium and then stopped for lunch at a place called Wahaca.  It was Mexican style food and it was pretty decent, though the best part of the meal was the “Citrus Fizz” beverage (crushed lime and torn mint leaves with sparkling water over ice).
After lunch we went to John Lewis to pick out new luggage for me.  After quite a bit of indecision on my part, I finally settled on a tall and skinny bag on wheels.  No more back packs for me!  The bag is perfect; it fits all of my things and it’s not going to make me strain every single muscle in my body taking it from one train to the next.  My favorite bit about it is that it’s hot pink.  Like, hot hot pink.  It’s fabulous.  I am entirely indebted to my aunt for buying it for me because it’s going to be so much easier for me to get around with it and everything.  After we got back to the house I basically hugged it for about an hour before transferring my things into it.  I’m not even kidding.

Sinead and I went out for dinner tonight at an Italian restaurant called Nuovo, and I ordered my first legal drink at a restaurant!  I got a glass of merlot to accompany our appetizers of fried calamari and garlic bread, followed by my main course of penne rosa.  It was quite good, but the orders were huge and we both probably left more on our plates than we could eat.  After dinner we walked to a bar called The Slug and Lettuce.  There was a 30^th birthday party going on there so it was completely packed, and we were waiting in line at the bar for practically ten minutes before Sinead saw a friend of hers who was already at the bar and ordered our drinks for us.  We got vodka & red bulls and it was my first legal drink at a bar!  How exciting!  We ended up taking a cab home and now here I am, getting caught up with documenting my trip and making my first post on this blog.  

It’s getting late now (2:40 am England time), and I’m supposed to wake up early-ish tomorrow so I can decide what we should do for the day.  Clearly it’s going to be a very tough and important decision and I ought to get some sleep to be ready for that, so I’m going to wrap up this post right about… now.