Shiiiire.... Bagginnnnnnns!

I left you, dear family and friends, in the safety of a Heathrow cafe.

Moments later found me body-slamming a rapidly closing gate, a gate that stood between me and the London Underground. My midwestern charm was failing to dissuade the old bloke padlocking me out. I hate taking buses. 

Wendy had given me twenty pounds before I left, which was the only cash I had. Not really being familiar with buses, because I hate them, I boarded and thrust my twenty-pound note towards the driver, saying in a thin, falsely cheery voice speckled with hard r's, "One to Piccadilly Circus, please." 

His eyes met mine, and I swear, I felt a little squeeze on my throat as though he were trying to telepathically strangle me. Without looking away, he pulled out his own wallet and started counting change. 

I wasn't sure what to do, so I lingered in the cabin. A line was forming behind me. 

"Moo ow ta green, la," he said. 

I smiled pleasantly, hoping he would give me my change so I could put my big bag down. Another girl boarded, clearly as confused as I was. It turned out that we were trying to find the same hostel. 

The bus stared at both of us, her pointing at her brightly-colored map and speaking in broken English and me lurking next to the stairs as unobtrusively as an elephant in five shirts and a ukulele. We realized at about the same time that cutting our losses was the only way to deal with this. As he handed my change back and said, "Ma'am, please would you move out of the green zone, you're blocking the way," we scampered off the bus to a choir of exasperated sighs behind us. 

A middle-aged man with a greying mullet, probably named Ned or Reg, saw us trying to count our change. He descended and enthusiastically informed us that bus fare was two pounds seventy, but that we'd better not pay in paper because our stop was the first of the late run and the driver wouldn't have change yet; we'd put him in a foul mood for the rest of the night. Oops...

Ned/Reg ended up taking the same bus as us and chatted our sleep-deprived ears off about everything London and everything bus. He seemed to have the routes memorized and labored under the delusion that we wanted to know the intimate details of the N19 line, which... we didn't.

At the hostel, I tried to get some sleep, but since by body kept politely informing me that it was just about time to head home from the theater building and start making dinner, my best attempts were wasted. Instead, I left all my stuff tucked under the sheets like a very fat tourist and poked around the city until dawn. I watched the rising sun backlight Big Ben and drank a cup of coffee next to the Thames. Parliament is gorgeous. 

I made it back to the hostel via Trafalger square, slowly seeing the flaw in my romantic "spend the sunrise exploring London" scheme - namely... jet lag (dun dun duuuuun).

Getting to Warwick was a caffeine-laced hallucination. The surreal paranoia that I was still asleep in The Nook wasn't helped by a series of gag announcements broadcasting over Chiltern Station's intercom in the dryest of British voices, the most memorable of which was:

"Attention, we have a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Message reads : Ooh hoo hoo, I wanna be like yoou hoo hoo. That's a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Thank you." 

I sat next to a very sweet and cute guy on the train who's name was Ahmal ("What's your name?" "Amalia." "I'm Ahmal." "Amalia." "Ahmal." "You can just call me Molly...") and he, saint that he was, let me sleep and woke me up at my stop.

Vicky met me with her grandma and grandpa. We screamed like little girls when we saw each other and one of the conductors commented on the loveliness of our reunion. YES. IT WAS LOVELY. WE'RE LOVELY PEOPLE.

More to come! Sorry for the overload. Seeing King John at the Royal Shakespeare Company on Saturday for Vicky's birthday!!

No, guys, Marmite. WTF. The yuckiest.

-Molly