Hello Followers My Old Friends!

Hey Y'all, we are still cruising along...finally got us some free Internet access to do us some updating! (We are inFramce so I figured some good ol' country twang was in order, you know, just for the locals!). So the last update was a bit of a cliff notes version, my apologies, so I hope this one will be a bit more thorough (There's just too much to cover). Last we left offer were heading to London, which feels like a month ago..... wait that is about right....okay, it feels like two months ago... yeah that's better. So, we made it to London with a little help from our friends, the ones from the dairy farm. We spent quite a bit of time wandering the city aimlessly in search of our hostel, which is a task that loses much of it's laisse fare, romanticized appeal when you've got a 40 lb (18.18 kg...so European) strapped to your back. We eventually found the right place and settled in, albeit after a slight miscommunication over the price (the girl working there quoted us for all three nights, which we took as the per night rate.., 'bout had a heart attack). We really enjoyed London ( surprisingly so...I mean I
it's British) and got to see a lot of sights. All our bunk mates were cool to, which is huge. We walked across Abbey Road (if you're there you gotta) and all the regular hot spots (by the way Rob, it was 9 o'clock last I saw on Big Ben...you're not alone, I made sure the group waited around to hear the bell ring to mark the hour). The Tower of London was a great sight to see, lots if history and such... the Crown Jewels were there too, which are a bit outrageous...we are talking close to 200 carat diamonds with perfect clarity just for rituals to celebrate a largely symbolic dynasty....still cool to see... but really?! The prison art in the old cells was really impressive and a great peice of history. We also went to visit the hotel/house where Jimmy Hendrix died (couldn't find the exact place, but we walked the entire streetso we passed by it, good enough I suppose). After London, we took a ferry from Dover, England to Calais, France (my first experience being in a country where I couldn't speak the language...a bit more intimidating than I originally thought it would be...but it's France, they love it when you butcher their language through Lonely Planet phrase book pronunciation...oh man). We managed to findour way though and found that the people that were supposed to be helpful, i.e. tourist info and bus station attendants were just opposite, while most people on the street were very willing to help. Small side note: while trying to figure out a bus schedule we met two other guys trying to do the same thing. We ended up talking a little and they asked if we were from Belgium, we told them we were American and they said they were from Afghanistan....not gonna lie, there was a slight pause on both sides...that moment of both sides going "okay, what's the rest of this interaction going to look like?"...but we shook hands and exchanged names and realized we were just four people at a bus stop....we ended catching the bus north with the intention of making it from London, England to Bruges, Belgium in a single journey...tune in tomorrow to find out! ( It's almost 1 a.m. here and it was a long day of travel...to be continued...from where is the mystery you can try and figure out!).