LONDON, Day 1

The first weekend here, I went to London with Eseul, Jennifer, and Fang. It was my first time traveling on my own and all of our first stays at a hostel.

London is basically the NYC of England. It's huge, busy, and there is always something to see or do.












This is how our trip started!

We all met up at 6:15AM and walked to the bus stop together, where we then took a bus to Brighton and walked to this place which we thought was our coach station.

We got there super early, like 6:45, so we had a lot of time to kill before our coach arrived at 7:45.


(Eseul, this picture of you is Facebook profile pic status... haha.)
Here we are waiting for our coach... completely oblivious to the fact that we're at the wrong station.

After talking to one of the locals who made the same mistake as us, we found out that our correct station and made our way there. However, it was too late...


So, we found this cute cafe and sat down to wait for the 10 AM coach.




Eseul's coffee and croissant... looks good huh? It was...

We almost ended up having to pay another 16 pounds for a new ticket, but one of the staff there got us on the 10 AM coach. He was a bit condescending/mean about it, but he did help us out nonetheless so I am thankful for him. =)

Finally on our way!

The coach is pretty nice, and our tickets were only 8 pounds each roundtrip (I ordered them online). Not bad at all...

Two hours later, here we are...
I still remember this feeling getting off the coach and seeing London for the first time. I was so excited and overwhelmed that I almost scared myself... haha.

We walked around aimlessly for a while until we finally settled down and found a place to eat. We were STARVING by this time.

We ate at this random sandwich cafe.





It was cute but the sandwiches were no good... you have to pay 50 pence ($1) for them to toast your sandwich and even more for lettuce and tomatoes. I'm Chinese so obviously I'm too cheap to pay for that stuff... so my sandwich ended up being this cold, chewy mayonnaise sandwich with bits of chicken inside.

I guess it's kind of funny now looking back.. haha.

This day, it rained pretty hard for like 10-15 minutes. London weather is really ADD. You can get four seasons in one day. One minute it's pouring and the next, the sun's out.

Don't even know what this is... we were literally walking around aimlessly!
Next time we know to plan better...
I guess we were so overwhelmed with booking hostels and figuring out transportation that we did not plan out what we wanted to see and do there as well as we should have.

After getting directions from some random biker, we ended up here:


This place is called the Vauxhall Bridge. You can see Big Ben and the London Eye here.




There were a ton of drivers on the bridge watching us as we took these pictures... no shame, haha.



To be honest, I'm not too sure what this place is. The biker guy said something about James Bond and military intelligence... oh well. By the way, this is at the huge blue and beige building in the pictures before.

After that, we made our way to our hostel...


...by tube.

We made it! So proud of us.

London is split up into eight different zones, with central London (basically all the tourist attractions) being in zones 1 and 2. We didn't know this at first and booked a hostel in zone 4... so it took us about 30 minutes on bus and tube to get to central London each day.

Here is our room!

There were 5 bunks in there (so 10 beds total).

When I first walked in and saw GUYS' things on the other beds, I got so scared that they would be these shady guys. But luckily, they ended up not even showing up that night... and the next day when we came back from London, their stuff was gone.

After settling in, we all knocked out for two hours (we were so exhausted). Then we went to Greenwich Village to look for dinner. Here is what our dinner looked like:




Chips, Indian curry (from the fridge section of the grocery store), ham and raw spinach, and stir-fried vegetables... so interesting.


This is the kitchen and common room of our hostel. We stayed here the entire night and met some really interesting people: two guys who were born in Virginia but grew up in Spain and are now learning English in England, one girl from New York traveling alone (she's so brave), and two students from Stanford.

That is the end of my first day in London!!

Brightonian Nights

On Wednesday of the first week of school, there was a huge event called the "Pub Crawl" where they split everyone up into groups and took each group to 3 different pubs in Brighton. Afterwards, we all met at and got free admission to the biggest club in Brighton, Oceana.

This was a strange night for me because 1. I don't drink and 2. I've never been to a club or a bar.

Anyways, here is how the night started...

I got ready with two of my hallmates, Margaret and Lily.

We all met up in front of York House (another dorm on campus) and got split up into our different groups.

We took the bus into Brighton.

We arrived! at Churchhill Square, which is the center of the city. There's a watchtower there along with bigger, more well-known stores like H&M.

Then we WALKED...


...for what seemed like ten years.

They have this here too!!! haha kidding... I think it's just the same name.

Pub #1. Didn't stay here for long.


The inside of the pub... and Eseul!

Off to our next stop...
MORE WALKING. My feet were beginning to hurt.


Pub #2

Dang, random red jacket guy ruined this picture.

I didn't stay in this pub because some of the girls I was with were hungry, so we went nearby to get some fish and chips. (Did you know "chips" are fries and "crisps" are chips?)

The fish and chips place we decided on.
Eseul really loves these... MIRROR SHOTS.

The guy was trying to charge us extra to eat in the restaurant so we had to go outside to eat. We ended up eating at the bus stop.

THEN, we went to our last pub of the night...


I didn't really like this pub because it was stuffy and there were no places to sit, but it was in a really cute area of the city.


Around this time, it was nearing 10PM and we started making our way towards the club. My feet were really killing me by this time (never again am I going to try walking that much in high heels) so Eseul bought me band-aids from a local convenience store for like 2.50 pounds or something. SO expensive... thank you UMMA ESEUL!

The city looks even prettier at night.

The club... one word: BALLIN'!


Prettyyy excited...

The club was two stories and had four different themed rooms. This one was the main dance floor:

I have nothing to compare this to... but it just looked really nice to me.


This room was cute too!



For the first hour or so, the club was pretty empty/dead because only half of our entire group was there. But later on, around midnight or 1AM, it was PACKED. I felt like I was going to suffocate on the dance floor because there were so many people pushing and shoving and there were literally no places to sit.

Even though it was exciting for me to see what nightlife is like (cause we really don't have any in Irvine), I think this night made me miss my friends back home a lot and made me realize that I'm really not into the whole clubbing/partying scene. I wouldn't mind doing this again but next time I definitely want to go with my close girl friends instead of people I just met for a few days.

Since the group I was with (my hallmates) were hanging out really late, I was getting super tired and bored so I ended up leaving by myself... but I was fortunate enough to find three other girls to walk with to the bus station (it was like 3AM by this time). I walked all the way there in my bare feet! It felt gross but I had no other choice. My feet were in serious pain.

All in all, it was an interesting night.