Sooo, people have been asking about my recent tour through Europe and rather than have to tell the story 100 times I figured I'd just blog about it.
My first stop on the 10 day tour was London and the first day was anything but ordinary ;). I arrived in Heathrow around 10am (5am EST) and my knight in shining armor, Josh (pictured left), made a 6 hour journey on skateboard (okay really by bus lol) to rescue me. Why did it take him 6 hours....because it was my luck that the fabulous tube workers were on strike that day lol. Best thing about it was that I got to do some writing while I waited, worst part...I had no international service on my phone and wasn't sure what the pay phone was charging me on my credit card so I think I only checked in with him twice AND I had actually never met Josh, so I really didn't know what he looked like lol.
Upon my rescue we headed towards the city at a beautiful rate of 18pounds (which is like $36) and arrived in time to attend an album release for a friend of Josh's. First of all the city is crazy clean...really! No rats, no trash, no funny smells (at least not where we were) and second of I never realized how American I am until this trip lol. I almost got ran over every time we crossed the street because I kept looking the wrong way LMAO, I kept getting strange looks when asking for the restroom because apparently a toilet and a bathroom are two different things and I kept freezing my hands to death because the hot and cold water faucets are set in reverse of how they're set in the states lol.
At the album release I couldn't get over the fact that they reference 'The Queen'. That's such a strange thing to hear as an American because while you know what they're talking about and you know it's a real person; you can't help but feel like you're in a fairytale and start to see visions of the queen from Shrek or something lol. So silly but this is where my mind was. I met the lovely Belinda (pictured above) at the album release and she accompanied us to my first feature of the week @ 'Kid I Wrote Back'.
This event was off the hook. I met some great new friends and saw a very different aspect of poetry. I mean people were really going in; there were people who performed in masks, people performed very experimental/theatrical poetry and I saw some really cool amazing traditional poetry as well!! My set was fun, we laughed joked and then the audience was kind enough to support financially as they purchased albums. May I just say that London currency is easy once you know it but until you do, you just have to trust that people aren't going to rip you off and you're not ripping them off when you're giving them change lol...I'm sure they'll say something in the later case but there's a lot of trust involved in the earlier case.
We wrapped up our evening around 12am ish which is like 7pm EST, ate Kebab & Chips (which were not what I expected lol...I asked for a side of chips and thought I was going to get a small portion, these suckers gave me like 5lbs of fries...really? WTF lol) and I laid to rest in Hackney, thrilled about my first day and looking forward to the remainder of my trip.
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