I'll admit, I was kind of crabby shortly after arriving in London. Being the cheap-o, budget traveler that I am, I booked my plane tickets into the London Luton airport. It's located way out in the boonies to the North of London. Wembley stadium happens to be located way out in the boonies to the North West of London. So I found a hostel that was pretty cheap in Hendon, which is pretty much between Luton and Wembley.
I arrived in Luton and had to take a bus to the Luton Airport Parkway where I then sat on a train for about 45 minutes maybe. The train took me to the Hendon train station, which is the "budget train station" in Hendon. So, I walked a little ways to the Hendon Central Station through the sad looking little town of Hendon. None of this was really that big of a deal, but sometimes I just want to scream to myself, "Really, Kirsten!?" You go through all of this and probably only saved like $10 on a flight. Whatever. Sometimes I just get really sick of how I operate. Haha.
My hostel was really easy to find, it was right across the street from Central Station. But, like I said earlier, it was cheap. Not disgustingly cheap, but cheap enough that I just wanted to fall asleep, wake up and get out of there ASAP. Thankfully, the other people in my room were normal and no one snored Snoring is probably one of the only things that has the power to make me instantly angry. The only WIN here is that there was a bus stop right outside of the door that took me straight to Wembley Stadium. It couldn't have gotten much easier, so I was thankful for that.
Since I was checked into my room by noon, I had some time to explore. I took the tube from Hendon to the London Bridge stop. London Bridge is really a beautiful structure. Everyone else had the same idea to walk across the bridge today too. There were people shoulder to shoulder across the whole bridge. Madness. It was worth it, though.
Honestly, it just felt so good to be back in an English-speaking country. Don't get me wrong, Geneva is really great with English and I've never had a problem. But, it was nice to be able to read advertisments and newspapers, and understand the announcements on public transport. I also didn't feel like a total loser when someone on the streets would make a comment to me or ask a question. It's that comfort zone thing.
I also saw the Towers of London. They had an absolutely beautiful display that has been going on since July 17th. The entire moat is being filled with these red ceramic poppies. When the last poppy is planted on November 11th, there will be a total of 888,246, representing the number of soldiers who died fighting in the first World War.
I also stumbled upon the "HippopoThames". I'm not sure why, but he's cute.
I made a test run to Wembley the night before to see how long the bus would take. I was surprised to see how busy it was the night before at 9 pm. Excitement is growing!
See the next post for the official game day update and what I did to help out. :)