nearing the end: paris, london

As you can tell from the ease with which you can read my prose (or rather, the ease with which I can type it; whether it is readable is entirely my responsibility, and I make no promises given my current level of exhaustion) that I am no longer in Paris. No, I have returned to London, where the differences between the US and the UK are deadlier than the differences between the US and Paris (i.e. they drive on the wrong side of the road and have a longer history of mad cow disease), but are less annoying (i.e. they speak English, and their keyboards are arrangd just like oure). I parted ways with Claudia in Paris this afternoon; she was bound for Amsterdam and what will hopefully be a short wait for a flight home, while I took a train to London for a day of complete and utter relaxation before flying to Hyderabad on Saturday.

I have bigger blisters on my feet than I thought were possible; and, either the rash that most people got after their bout of fever and coughing (the disease that plagued me the last week that I was in India) afflicted my feet instead of my hands like in other cases, or there were bedbugs in Bordeaux. Either of these are possible; given that Claudia did not suffer any damage, I'd like to believe that it wasn't bedbugs, but it also seems strange that a rash would only impact my feet and legs. Regardless, they itch like crazy, and the combination of inflamed bumps, obscenely large blisters, and sore feet combines to make me not want to leave my hotel ever again. I was going to see Westminster Abbey tomorrow, since I've been to Lodnon twice already without seeing it, but it might not happen. I will at least stir from my hotel to have lunch with Lea, who went to my high school and later married an Englishman; it should be fun, and I am looking forward to the sheer novelty of seeing someone from my rather small graduating class of 64 in a foreign country. My education was surprisingly good, considering that I went to a small, rural public school with no AP classes and a reasonably large percentage of delinquents (particularly this one girl, Katie, who used to sell crack cocaine behind the stage in the old gym). I didn't get a chance to use my rapidly diminishing Spanish on this trip, but I did get to use the only phrase that I remembered from my one year of rather informal French: 'je voudrais un croque-monsieur'. I didn't even really want a croque monsieur, but since they had it on the menu at the place we stopped for lunch in Bordeaux, I felt obliged to order it. It's a ham and cheese sandwich, coated in egg and more cheese and toasted until all melty inside and out. It was extremely rich and I didn't really like it, but I felt happy to have used my French knowledge to its fullest.

My hotel in London is super swanky, especially compared to the place that we stayed at in Bordeaauz--at twelve euros a night per person for a room that we didn't have to share with anyone, I suppose that we shouldn't have expected much. It was rather dirty, four floors up with no elevator, the lampshade was broken, and I couldn't flip my pillow over in the night like I usually do because it had to remain covered by the bedsheet due to the fact that the pillow was covered in unidentifiable stains. Judging by that description, you might believe that I am currently suffering from bedbug bites, but the world shall never know. However, the hostel in Bordeaux was charming in a completely disastrous way (my favorite!); I'll post a picture when I get back to India. I also won't share the name of the hostel here because I don't want people to do google searches for it and find my less-than-charitable revies; I would hate to preven someone else from having the same amazing time that we had. Suffice it to say that the mattress was so old and unsupported that it felt like I was sleeping in a hammock; I haven't been that wrapped up in my bed since the night of my twentieth birthday, when the towers fell and my futon collapsed; too heartsick/intoxicated to fix it, I slept in the deep vee made by the broken frame. The bed in Boredeaux reminded me of that, which was very comforting in a strange way.

There is nothing like those privations in my hotel in London. I splurged on a real hotel after two weeks of backpacking, and I'm very happy that I did; it is so refreshing to have my own bathroom, stocked with bathrobes and premium soaps. I also have internet on my tv (which explains why I'm writing this), and I got a hamburger and fries from room service afer arriving. I'm staying here two nights, which will be the first time that I'm spending two nights in the same accomodations since I was in London nearly two weeks ago. I'm going to sleep late, take a bath, have lunch with Lea, perhaps do some desultory shopping, and then relax the rest of the day. Since I have to go back to work on Monday, after arriving back in India on Sunday afternoon, this is my last chance to relax before everything goes insane again.

Okay, I'm really tired, so it's time for bed. I'll write a more formal wrap-up of my trip at some point in the not-so-distant future.