Pete UK Update No.2

London is a big, and bustling place. Although the streetmaps look like its not much bigger than cambridge, thats because they don't put all the little streets in. So what would be a 20 minute walk across cambridge ended up being nearly an hour, and that was after cheating at the end and getting on the subway for the final 2 stops. There was a light at the end of the tunnel though, the light in Joe's eyes. Always happy, always energised and always browsing for eligable women, which London had them everywhere. Biggest thing (litterally) I've noticed after spending a week in Japan is that the women over here all have huge jugs! And when there is a hot day, they love to show them off. Which can be a bit hazardous, as there isn't much sun up here, so no one has a tan, so when they come out they're blindingly bright white.We ended up seeing some of the inner city like Oxford Circus (still not sure why they're circuses, I kept expecting to see a high wire act, or lions and elephants, but was always dissapointed), we had a drink at Liecster square, and observed a similar hen's night to one in sydney, in all their cheap crappy horns and pen1s-straws. The difference here though, is that the hen is increadibly active in grabbing guys and being quite forward with some (not with me (un)fortunately). Its like "oi, you can't do that .. oh sorry, didn't notice you were on your hen's night, carry on"The nightlife in the middle of London is like octoberfest, the crowds are thick, and pushy, and are often making their way to the queues hanging out the front of restaurant, which although are long, go suprisingly quick, and have service much nicer than a coffee shop that had more staff than patrons.Soho is the newtown of London, and situated right in the middle, so we went through there and were compelled to go into a bar called G.A.Y. by one of the other guys that came down from Cambridge. I've been a bit perplexed in the UK, as all the cute women are always with really ugly blokes. I'm probably not the best judge, but I call them as I see them. That night I found out where all the not so ugly blokes were - they were gay. Don't get me wrong, there were still a lot of ugly blokes in there, topping the list with the big black guy that sat in the bathroom handing out hand-towels and aftershave/perfume, who produced his nuckles and said "give me some skin" in his best B-A-Baraccas voice. I gave him some nuckles, but still didn't tip him for handing me a hand towel, he could've actually CLEANED the bathroom instead of sitting in the filth masking it with perfumes. I needed condom's for my shoes. Upstairs we finished our beers, got a few photos for proof (or blackmail) and went back into the night to a couple more bars before Joe split and went home with his GF and we met up with the other Aussies.This was when I found out about another wacky trick of London. The subway closes at midnight. Which means everyone that is still drinking, or misses the last train has to find other (much more expensive) ways home. So around midnight the crowds go from no elbow space, to "who farted?" as everyone quickly disperses down rabbit holes to get to the subways home. We ended up getting the last train back to our hostel where 3 of the sydney people were staying in a 5 bunk room. After scaling 5 floors of very steep stairs, we woke up our bunk buddies on entry and scrabled to our bunks. In the morning I vaguely remembered they were women, but didn't see more than eyes and foreheads and lumps in the bed could've been bags (I slept with mine). The girls got up early and cheerfully had a shower and were putting on their makeup when I finally decided to find the shower. The showers were like toilet cubicles except instead of a toilet underfoot there was a one inch puddle of water that all 4 showers ran into. Steeling myself and trying to find a place to put my watch and rings I went in. No communal soap and as I kept hearing footsteps go up and down the stairs, which my shirt and rings were I had a quick splash-and-dash. We didn't know we should've brought towels and the front desk were hiring them for 5 pounds ($15!!), so I decided to dry myself with my T-Shirt from the day before. This worked well, and I finished it off with the extra bedsheets that I didn't put on the bed the night before. And went down into the basement for communal breakfast of toast with red jam (no idea if it was strawberry or something else).We didn't have any plans for sunday except to take it easy and not have any plans, so we went for a wander through hyde park from north to south (much quicker than my previous day's west to east) and kept walking to checkout Harrod's shopping mall, which is renouned for being extremely expensive. I was relieved when we got there that it didn't open till 12 (2 hours later), so we ended up going to a nearby museum. Finding a bus map on the way we found out that there was a Natural and a Science museum on the next block, so we spent about an hour in each museum walking more and trying to keep the blood flowing to our feet.After that we were happy to have a quick seat in a subway then the train back to Cambridge, but there was trackwork on the direct link between us and Kings Cross station, so we had to go round. After getting on 2 wrong subway trains we were in a worse position than when we started, but a friendly trainguard put us back on track and we still got to KingsX before the fly-through train back to Cambridge. After going past lots of fields that had nothing but hay on them (no one produces anything in the UK except hay?) I knew I'd be home soon. Getting out of the train station it hit me that the buses didn't run on sundays. It was a 45 minute walk back to my appartment, which took over an hour as I took a wrong turn and went 15 mins in the wrong direction. Finally getting home I thanked the UK gods as there was friendly Top Gear on TV, its alwyas good at the end of the day to laugh at someone setting fire to a caravan.http://www.hostellondon.com/hosteldetails.php/HostelNumber.517 This is the hostel we stayed in. Not sure where they got the pictures from though, I don't remember it looking anything as good as that (except for the entry)