#thisaupairlife

While I am not a big fan of Chris McCandless I am going to open this blog post with a quote he wrote in the margins of a book shortly before he passed away in the wilderness of Alaska.

“HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”

I don’t like McCandless because he pursued (most of) his adventures purposefully alone. I didn’t think I was doing the same thing when I boarded the plane to Barcelona in January. I was going to join a family, a new culture, a new community.

And it did! But I was never felt fully integrated and I honestly only had two friends outside of the family in my town. 

While my adventures were amazing and I got to see so many incredible things, when I traveled to Barcelona I was always the weird one because I lived there but on my two day weekends I was also a tourist. Always meeting people passing through, and only a few who stayed. I felt very alone even surrounded by people. It’s one thing to be with people, and another to be known by the people you’re with. 

When I traveled abroad, I also traveled alone. I went to Barcelona and Dublin and London and it was all spectacular. But I would trade ALL of the cathedrals and beaches and boat rides and hikes and museums to experience one of them with a friend. Right now I have a collection of photos and ticket stubs that I don’t regret. I learned a ton! I learned about myself, I learned how to speak better Spanish, I learned mediterranean cooking, but after three months I knew it was time to come home. Happiness is only real when shared. Life is only worth it when it’s shared.

All that to say plus a few other reasons, I flew home and hugged my mom on April 17 and my best friend surprised me at the airport and it was the best day of the year. So I’m back in West Michigan for a while. I get to walk at graduation and make my family happy andreconnect with my community and culture a bit more before I move to Montana for another summer. I’ll be posting more travel things while I’m home because I lost a lot of motivation to keep y’all updated my last month in Spain. So keep reading, keep in touch, and let’s get some coffee now that I’m back in the pleasant peninsula. 

So I’ve heard my whole life about how Brits know how to “queue” or as I liked to call it, stand in a line. I wasn’t that impressed. Anybody can stand in a line and wait. But when I arrived in London I found I was very, very wrong. British lines are called queues for a reason. They’re massive. They never end. And if you cut, I’m pretty sure they arrest you. And lucky for all arriving guests, you get to experience this cultural phenomenon the second you step off the plane and wait to get through customs.

After the dizzying line I somehow managed to get a bus ticket to the wrong part of the city. Stratford to be precise. I was staying near King’s Cross. After a couple minutes of confusion and struggling to understand the Tube system I took a break to look around. I was standing in the area of the 2012 Olympic Summer Games and it was beautiful. Then I stood in 3 different queues to get my Oyster card (metro pass).

My first ride on the Tube was surprisingly above the ground. On the Tube you get to experience the great cultural phenomenon of “avoiding the eye contact of other passengers even if it means jumping off the Tube and getting eaten by rats.” London is a very serious city.

When I got to my hostel (Clink 78 — don’t stay there. It sucks. And is full of 18 year olds on holiday from Spain.) I checked into my room and found another American girl checking into the same one. And she was an au pair in Germany. And she had just graduated college. My soul sister. We became fast friends and spent the night wandering around the Southbank, Chinatown, Camden, and Leicester Square where we accidentally stumbled on the red carpet premiere of The Second Best Marigold Hotel. After spending time with friends in Barcelona who have no idea what it’s like to live as a foreigner and an employee in somebody’s home it was refreshing to air grievances with someone who understood.

The next day we split up because I had a lot of ground to cover. I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until I got on my flight back to Barcelona. I honestly caught the last bus to make my flight seconds before it pulled away from the stop.

Instead of boring you with the details of me walking around alone for four days, I’ve made some lists in true internet-journalistic form.

Things I Loved:

The doughnuts at Bread Ahead (I would seriously kill for these)

British Accents

The Owl & The Pussycat pub (thanks Billy!)

Brick Lane

Gin & Tonics at the Ace Hotel with new friends

Basically all of Shoreditch

All of the old things (aka pretending I’m in 1 of 1000 British movies I’ve seen in my lifetime)

Street food at the Borough Market (cheap and to die for)

Pretending I was in Harry Potter movies

Things I Liked:

Tate Modern

Changing of the horse guard

St. Paul’s

Crown Jewels (Tower of London)

Biking through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park

Things I Hated:

The Tube

The massiveness

Tourist pubs everywhere claiming to be the oldest one, like, ever

Box Park

The shitty pub crawl I went on that literally had 3 people

London Eye (a waste of $50 if you ask me. just go up an elevator in a tall building or get a decent meal in the building next to the Shard)

Bus tour

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (aka being squashed with a bunch of people with backpacks and puffy jackets for 3 hours)

Clink Hostels