It's late so I'll try to keep this one a little more trim than yesterday's, though its coherency may be down.

I escaped this morning's tour with the annoying New Yorker since I couldn't find here, probably because she left after I wasn't there exactly at 9:15. I was only a couple minutes late but I think this is for the best. After going back to bed, I went to the British Museum and spent almost all the remaining daylight hours there. It was incredible and I only regret that a few of their exhibits were closed (Africa, Japan). The Egypt and Assyrian collection they have is amazing and astonishingly well preserved. I really have no clue how these 4000 year old statues have retained so much detail, but they still look brilliant. I was so entranced by these exhibits I forgot to eat anything all day, which is actually a great financial life hack.

After eating some truly terrible microwave mac & cheese for dinner I tried to hang out with some people in the small common area we do have, but after a while I decided that these people were a little off and that I'd rather go somewhere else. Having missed the bar crawl by this point, I set off on my own to hit the (in)famous chain of pubs called Wetherspoons. It was pretty boring and there wasn't a good way to meet strangers. Walking back to the hostel, I ran into a variety of drunk characters including some extremely annoying French business students. I walked with them for a while since we were going the same way but declined an invite to join them at wherever it was they were going. I swung into the bar just a few buildings down from the hostel, where I quickly struck up a conversation with this Kiwi named Mitch who was extremely friendly. He bought me and some of his other friends a round and we spent the next few hours dancing to the live musician they had. Everyone in this pub was incredibly outgoing and friendly in a way that I'm not used to. I suppose it could have just been that my attitude changed now that I'm on my own, but I don't think so. I started a running joke with this one local who was poking fun at me for not knowing a lot of the Britpop songs which apparently haven't made it to the States yet, until a triumphant moment where I demonstrated my mastery of the lyrics to Hey Jude. He played along and it was a blast. This really wasted middle aged guy kept trying to sneak in through the out door, and every time he did the bouncer would rather aggressively throw him back out onto the sidewalk. It was extremely funny. I think I've decided that I like London.

Mitch and some of his mates are apparently going out tomorrow night too, and he's invited me to join them. I probably will since it's not like I know anyone else. I'm going to a different hostel these next couple nights, one on the western side of the city closer to a bunch of the sights I'm still missing. Hopefully it has a kitchen and more sociable clientele. There's been this one Dutch lady who's probably in her 30s who sleeps in the bunk under mine, and as far as I can tell she almost never leaves. What are you doing staying in a hostel if you're just going to spend all day in the dorm room? But the real reason I'm switching hostels is because this new one is extremely cheap and I can use my capital one sign on bonus credit towards it, so I'm effectively staying on their dime.