Germs Can't Break Me

By the time we had made it over to the British Museum to check in to my next hostel, the Astor Museum, I could tell I was coming down with something. I couldn't properly check in until 2, so we stashed our bags in their luggage room and went wandering for a few hours. There was an exhibit in the British Museum that Kirsten was interested in, so we spent about an hour in there. I was a bit bummed as I thought: in a nearby alternate universe I have just interned here for a year and got to work with one of the biggest skeletal collections in museum world, but I was more bummed that I was sick. After we left the museum we got some lunch and then hit up a pharmacy so I could get some medicine and orange juice. The rest of the day I waited with Kirsten until she had to go catch her train home, and then I tried to take it easy.
All I wanted was to sleep forever, but the first half of the night I was choking on snot, and the second half I had the worst sinus pressure headache of my life. The medicine I'd got that day didn't really help much. I might have got about 3 hours of sleep in the early morning.
I did feel a little bit better after that little bit of sleep, and I did not want to waste a day in London, so I had a shower and breakfast and went out. I decided to check out Regents Park, which is where I always figured I would've gone running if I'd moved there. My first impression of this massive and well-known park was surprisingly not a great one. This was because I entered the park in the Avenue Gardens, which are beautiful, but strange. They're strange because they look nothing like any other English park or garden; they're too prim and proper and structured. The traditional English garden is like a controlled chaos...random flowers jumbled together...obviously planned, but made to look like they were just thrown together. Its funny, because based on everything else about the English, you'd expect their gardens to all look like the Avenue Gardens. My opinion is that parks and gardens are the one place (besides bars) that the English can escape their super structured, emotionally repressive lives and enjoy some disorganized beauty. I also think thats why they're more inclined to sit on the grass, picnic style, instead of on benches and such. English gardens are special places where people can color outside the lines of their regular lives. They're just so pleasant. And once I left the Avenue Gardens area of the park it was much more traditional and I could relax again.

That night I had dinner plans with another archaeology friend. I first met Thea on a dig in Poland 3 summers ago. She lives in Victoria, Canada and just happened to be in London for a couple weeks using a skeletal collection to get data for her master's thesis. She was also about 4 months pregnant, which I thought was convenient given the fact that I shouldn't have been drinking either (had we both been able to drink, we would've thrown down, because thats just what archaeologists do). We met up in Islington, a neighborhood off the Angel tube stop, which was one of my top neighborhood choices for me to live in. I would not have been disappointed there. It had become a major foodie area, and we had a fantastic 2 course French meal for less than 14£ each. I'll say again: the stereotype about there being no good food over here is BULLSHIT. Yes, the majority of this is foreign food and not puddings made out of animal blood, but the point is that if you're not having some truly amazing meals in London then you are doing something very, very wrong. We went to a little cafe for coffee and dessert and ended up talking for hours. Afterwords we decided we should try to do dinner again before we left (she happened to be flying out the same day I was).
Unfortunately it didn't happen the next night...yet again I was kept awake by my face, which felt like it was going to explode, and so Thursday I woke up feeling even worse. All I did that day was spend a little time in Tavistock Square (my new favorite place), happen upon a couple used Evelyn Waugh books in a shop nearby, and get some more food, juice and cold medicine. I had actually got a little inspired to write something myself, and I spent some time writing in a notebook back at the hostel. Its been a long time since I felt like writing any sort of fiction, so I put all my creative efforts into that and kinda let the blog go by the wayside. Worth it though.
I finally managed to get a little more sleep that night, and I was determined to make the best of my last London day.