London and flight to Cairo June 22-23

I had discovered the night before I left that there was a cheaper way than the exorbitantly expensive taxis to get to my hostel (although I am now told there was an even cheaper way). I could take the Heathrow Express train for a £32 round trip ticket and then take a cab ride to my hostel (about £10). Although it involved a really long walk with the weight of my heavy luggage continually dragging at my arms I got to the proper train station and got on board, heading towards Paddington Station. The train was really nice and also only about a 15 minute ride. I got off and dragged my luggage across the station to the taxi stand where I got a taxi to take me to the International Students House. I checked in, went up to my room…and promptly fell asleep for at the very least 6 hours. I am not really sure how long I slept or what time it was because I was still groggy from the plane and I was actually calculating the London time incorrectly by an hour. Although technically a sort of hostel, it has short stay rooms and long term rooms for like entire terms. I got a private room and shared a bathroom and shower with the rest of the girls on the hall. I woke up in the late-ish evening and took a so-so meal of pasta downstairs in the cafeteria. It probably would have been better had I not had to not get the sauce containing fish. After that I went back to my room. Fighting the urge to just stay there and not do anything, I walked to Regent’s Park which I could see from the bedroom window. I feel like one of the many things that the British do so well is public parks and gardens. I wandered around the quite large park for almost two hours. There were many statues and flowers and a rose garden. I passed an open air theatre that was going to be putting on The Tempest shortly but I wasn’t sure I felt like navigating my way back to the hostel in the dark in a strange city. I managed to not get lost probably more due to the frequently posted maps rather than any innate sense of direction which I most definitely lack. I walked through the interior of most of the park and then went up to the top of the park to check if zoo was still open, but sadly it was not. I then walked around the outside edge of the park for quite a while so I could see and find the Central London Mosque. Along the way I passed some really posh houses but didn’t dare take pictures in case I got yelled at. I did take pictures of the mosque however. I then walked back to the entrance and managed to only get slightly turned around for less than five minutes before being able to get back to the ISH. After getting back I used my free 15 minutes on the internet to check my email and to let everyone know that I was still alive. After that I called to arrange a taxi pickup for the next morning from the convenient phone that had the sole purpose of connecting students to a taxi service. I read in my room for a while and then went to sleep. At about 11 or 12pm I was woken up by a large group of girls sitting in the hallway talking extremely loudly in Spanish. I did my best to passive aggressively tell them to shut up by walking past them in my PJs to the bathroom, but that didn’t seem to do much. I was thankful once again that I had decided to bring ear plugs. I woke up off schedule from local time at about 3:00am. I had very little to do so I just reviewed vocab and grammar until about 5:00am when I went back to sleep for an hour. I realized that my flight was earlier than I thought so I called the taxi company to have them come pick me up at about 6:30ish. I got to Paddington Station and took the Express back to Heathrow. Sadly because I left the hostel so early I did not get to use my free breakfast voucher. I checked in at the airport where they told me that there hadn’t been a gate assigned to my flight and they would do so by 8:00, which was about a half hour away and the flight wasn’t until 9:15. I checked through security and may have almost left my passport on the chair I was putting myself back together on (but only for 30s). So I got some lemonade and some sort of food in bar form and sat and read until there was a gate assigned which actually wasn’t until closer to 8:30. I was overjoyed when I found out that the entertainment system had Zelda: Age of Seasons on it since I had been looking for my copy before I left but sadly I did not discover this until the last hour and thus did not get to see much. One of the interesting things about the entertainment system on this plan aside from the excellent games selection was that there was a camera mounted on the front of the plane and you could see what was below the plane. The most exciting part is when we made a long loop around Cairo to get the right approach, we flew over the pyramids and you could see them on the camera! I was really lucky and while looking out the window I saw the step pyramid. Amazing. We landed in Cairo without incident.