DAY TWO

if you awake at five am it's probably for a couple reasons: one, you mean to wake up that early for work or a jump on the day; two, your friend woke up early and is waking you much too humanly early with his natural goings about. so, you and your colleagues awake hours before continental breakfast and you all wait. you all sit and wait. you ask when breakfast is and the guy at the front desk just says "breakfast time." i was not aware that there was a universal breakfast time in the UK. one of you goes upstairs to shower and the other two of you including the original culprit responsible for early rising head over to hang and hope for mcdonald's to open. the two of you have delicious breakfast sandwiches, hash browns and coffee each. you haven't eaten mickey d's since the last time you were in europe. afterwards, you head to the tate which is great and filled with hot young girls, a pub where you consume sausage sandwiches and pints of fuller's london pride, and hit the outskirts of churches you lack any desire to enter. john keeps ducking into churches you again do not want to go into but before you have any voice in the matter he's disappeared into the dark doorway of another church. ben and i joke about us burning if we enter the church but eventually are forced into stealing john away. one of the churches was bombed by the nazis and revealed upon bombing a part of the bible. ben said "see the nazis were good for something." we hit the steps and wait for john to do whatever inside st. paul's cathedral and then head to another pub to wait for john to go the masonic temple to set up a meeting of minds. we have a few beers, head home, take a nap, chase down a bar recommended us by ben's friend's where there are many young kids, and i do mean kids you only have to be 18 to drink in a bar out here, and as much as i feel old i know the two dudes i am with are even older, they have boddington's on tap, and the juke box is rad and free. this one girl comes up to ben as asks him if he has a "swizzle," he asks "a what?" she says a swizzle and he states his lack of knowledge inre a swizzle and she exclaims OHYOUREAMERICAN! we decide to leave after john somehow overtakes the momentum of the conversation between ben and this girl somehow turning it into a name drop of his bar in brooklyn, the one that is permanently plastered on the back of his tee shirt he wears almost 24-7. she retreats to her friends and we decide to bounce back to piccadilly circus which is basically times square london. we attempt to find this after hours joint marchese recommended me as every bar begins to close in the area. john asks one closing bar for any bar open at this hour and we end up in the UK version of TGIFriday's. it's called O'Neills and you can imagine. it's mostly asians and shitty top 40 songs. i get angry in this cartoon irish pub, have a shot alone and finally get my mates to bail. we end up finding the roxy, marchese's joint, get wasted on two for one beers and head back home with my belligerent friends in 20 pound cab. i attempt to communicate online with a friend back home but the keys on the board feel tiny to me and it takes me way to long to formulate words. i eventually give up. i find john soon after and he is hanging in a van around the back of the hostel, drinking and smoking with five other people. it's hot box central and after half a smoke i feel sick and head upstairs. john kisses some random black girl on the top of her head and she looks confused. back in the room, we find ben face down on the floor, sad and drunk, saying he wants to go home. i talk him down and we all go to bed.