I See London, I Saw France, I'm Coming Back with Only Half of My Underpants

     Here I sit, in an old courtroom in London where Dickens once sat.  Well, possibly.  He apparently worked somewhere in this place.  It's only a week until the Olympics are set to start here so the city has been prepped and cleaned before the mayhem of tourists and press and obviously athletes will inevitibly destroy it.  And as cool as it would be to attend an olympic event, I am so glad I will not be here for it.

But I am glad I decided to extend my stay in Europe to visit here.  I actually really like London.  The season of Summer does not exist here but you do get quick glimpses of sunlight and they are very enjoyable...  The rain is blah, but it's not unbearable.  It seems like there are actually more cyclists here, braving the rain, than there were in Paris.  And here people actually wear cycling helmets.  I thought it was kind of strange that in Paris I only saw a handful of people wearing cycling helmets.  Here you only see a handful without one.  

Getting here was a pretty enjoyable experience, as well.  Two thumbs up to the Eurostar people.  Comfortable seat, quite trains, not over booked and over crowded.  The train ride from Toulouse to Paris was 5 hours of crap.  It was overbooked so I didn't have an assigned seat so I spent half of the time sitting on the floor by the cafe.  I felt like a stowaway.  On the Eurostar I didn't even have anyone next to me.  So, two seats!  Woo!  

Repacking in Paris was an event though.  I always overpack when it comes to toiletries and underwear.  Two items you never want to run out of.  So I pack them like I'm supplying soap and underwear to small villages along my journey.  For some reason I highly overestimated my soap usage before this trip and I ended up leaving two unused bars of soap at the farm.  I'm still using the same bottle of liquid soap that I've been using the entire trip...  I also wasn't certain of the clothes washing situations I would run into so I packed pretty much every pair of underwear I own.  You can rewear a lot of things.  Underwear is not one of those things...  And it was a good thing I did that because that is the situation I've found myself in currently.  I was able to wash my clothes while at the farm, but now with staying in quaint hotels and hostels, clean laundry is something I haven't smelled in a couple of weeks.  But, being the panty hoarder that I am, I was left with a laundry bag full of dirty underwear and a pack full of dirty clothes along with plenty of clean underwear! And who wants to carry around a laundry bag full of dirty underwear???  No thank you.  So, I trashed them.  And look, I just made a little extra room in my pack!  

London, with the exception of Westminster and Buckingham Palace and places like that, isn't as picturesque as Paris, but I guess it's quite unfair to start comparing every city to Paris...  Unfair for the other city, I mean.  Paris is amazing.  I really loved it there.  I can't wait to return.  There is so much I didn't get to see!  And lots of stuff I didn't want to stop looking at!  But there are still so many other places in this world that I have yet to see and experience.  I can't wait to see more and can't wait to find the next "Paris".  I think I can find things to love about every place I go.  Except Sasebo, Japan of course.  That place just blows.