St Christopher’s Greenwich hostel

The hostel is actually better than I expected. It was one of a few that had 4 consecutive days open and at £10 a night it’s extremely cheap, around half of others. Its a little ways from downtown London so that’s probably why. Took me 2 hours to get there from Heathrow using the Underground and multiple transfers. I later found out that I could’ve taken the Overground and cut my trip by more than half. The location isn’t bad in my opinion, it’s just across the River Thames. The hostel is also right above a bar so a drink is just a walk down the stairs. And it’s just a 15 minute train ride from downtown, a very crowded train. We were literally packed like sardines. Super uncomfortable. Don’t like the feeling of another person’s breath directly in my face, let alone multiple people. Gives me shudders just thinking about it…Ughhhh.


Surprisingly there aren’t that many tourists staying at the hostel. In my room of 8 beds, 6 are filled. 4 of the beds are occupied by locals. One just got a job in the area as a real estate developer trainee and is staying until his flat is ready. Two are from Ireland and just transferred for local teaching jobs and are in the process of finding a place. The fourth is a real local. He actually lives (lived) near the hostel but got evicted from his residence for 6 months by a judge. He mentioned something about assaulting a neighbor or other. He eased our concerns by saying he only gets rowdy when he drinks, then he immediately downed a tall boy. I slept with one eye open. The only other traveler in the room besides me is Thomak from Poland. He’s a history teacher and bookstore owner. The first night I met him he tried to give me a Polish History lesson. Pretty interesting conversation as he doesn’t speak English and I don’t know a single word of Polish except piroshky, which by the way are delicious. He was basically speaking in Polish with a few broken English words. It was a lot of gestures on his part and many guesses on mine. We ended up “talking” for several hours. Basically a game of charades, Polish edition with an extended expansion pack. I’m pretty sure if we had a transcript of our conversation, it would’ve looked like two different conversations smashed together. But it was very entertaining.

St Christopher’s Greenwich hostel

Parliament

Me in front of the Big Eye - need to be more selective in who I ask

Sausage and Mash - I'm pretty sure they used boxed mash