Turning in early for the second night in a row. Early being 10 or 11, and this just means going back to my room, not necessarily to sleep. Basically it means I'm not really in a party mood, not really surprising considering my time in Interlaken and Amsterdam. Ross apparently has a big drinking night planned for saturday night so I think I'll be fine. Also there's supposed to be a karaoke night tomorrow night here at the hostel, so you know what that means. Anyway, I got to Brussels and found out how much poor planning costs without a Eurail. I paid €75 for a ticket to London. I think you can get flights from Amsterdam for around €40 (this of course requires planning ahead). Ah well.

Once I arrived in London, I made it to the hostel easily via the Tube and good directions from the guidebook. The hostel (called The Generator) is huge, it's like an entire apartment building. It has the widest range of age I've seen in a hostel, they have high school groups all the way to the elderly. Honestly, I was a little disappointed when I walked in, because I'm getting a little tired of big well organized hostels. They're wonderfully convienent and usually very social, but they have no feeling of culture; once inside it doesn't feel like you're in a foreign country. Oh well, I'll be looking for some more interesting ones in Scotland and Ireland.

After a nap, I had some relatively cheap dinner at the hostel (£3 for a plate of spaghetti and salad) I then walked around for a bit, just kinda wanted to be out in the city. Finished off the evening talking to a couple of Aussie girls that were in my room. This morning I woke up after the first decent nights sleep I've had since Lucerne. After enjoying the self serve all you can eat breakfast, I set out in what turned out to be fairly heavy rain. Got to get the stereotypical English experience, eh? I decided that the rain didn't bother me, but after about ten minutes I decided the stuff in my day pack was going to get wet and stopped to buy a cheap (in quality, not price) umbrella at a pharmacy I passed. I went looking for the salon that Alia recommended, but couldn't find it. Decided to hold off on the haircut, even though I really need one right now. I walked for a while, glanced in St. Peters cathedral (only a glance, anything more costs £6). I finally got to the Tower of London, where I managed to get a discounted ticket for being (get this) unemployed. I took the guided tour led by a Beefeater (it was included in the ticket price so I figured what the hell). It was entertaining, having this commanding guy telling morbid stories and stupid jokes. You got to wonder about these guys - career military guys that willingly become trumped up tour guides (to become a beefeater you have to have served 20 years in the military and have reached the rank of Sergeant Major). After that I scurried over to the Globe before it closed (this was about 3:45, I'd had a late start). Once I got there, I decided it wasn't worth The £6.50 to see the inside. I decide to go next door to the Tate Modern. Pretty interesting modern art museum, it had enough early 20th Century modern art to keep my interest. They had very good descriptions of the paintings that tell you what's going on in a painting, which made a lot of the more out there ones more palatable. Highlights: Picasso's Weeping Woman, a couple of Dalí paintings including Metamorphosis of Narcissus, and the fact that the museum was free. On the way back towards the hostel, I stopped in Covent Gardens. I ended up getting pulled into a street performer's act. My job was (along with a texan guy) to hold a 9 foot unicycle (or suicycle, as he called it) steady, and act as a human ladder. Once on it, the guy juggled knives while riding around. Then for dinner I went to a really good Indian restaurant (cheap too, £4.50 for Paneer Dosa, which was a lot of food). Back at the hostel I made a unsuccessful attempt at calling Ross, then had a single beer in the Bar before heading back to my room.