Travel Light

Welcome back to Sisterhood of the Traveling Thursdays! This might just be my favorite day as my travels are my favorite memories!

Tonight I want to talk about a very interesting experience I had in London on my third trip to Europe, second trip to London. This story includes a character whom I have not yet mentioned, so she requires some back story. Stick with me.

Her name is PeppeLaBabs.

I met PeppeLaBabs under somewhat… unusual circumstances. One of my best friends, EMoney, whom I have known since Jr. High was my roommate for a time around 2006-2007. We lived in an amazing apartment overlooking the Bay in San Diego with her twin sister and good friend of mine, Dewip.

It was during this short, but eventful year, that EMoney decided that she liked girls. Now, as a theater person, I have been around gay people since before gay people existed so I of course had NO issue with this whatsoever. But it was the way in which she decided to like girls that got my blood boiling a bit.

This part of the story is a blog for another day entirely, but basically EMoney met this wonderful guy at a bar and started dating him. He charmed Dewip and I immediately, but apparently his sister was the real charmer for EMoney. LONG, CRAZY story short, EMoney ended up with the sister instead… the sister was PeppeLaBabs.

As the best friend, I was expected to become buddies with the new significant other. I will admit, with the way the relationship began, it was a challenge for me to let my guard down and stop judging them both for being so ridiculous, but after a short time, I grew to really enjoy PLB (PeppeLaBabs is officially being shortened).

She was very funny, very outgoing, very interesting, and very much a girl. This sets up a strange dynamic. When you are becoming friends with your best friends boyfriend, the boundaries are so clearly set up, but when the boyfriend is a girl, the boundaries are not so clear. For example, going to coffee with a friends new boyfriend might be a bit odd. But going to coffee with a girlfriend, which is how I saw PLB, is not strange at all. Well, basically, it was hard to figure out what I was and wasn’t supposed to be doing.

I invited Dewip, EMoney and by default, PLB to Vegas early on in the relationship. At first, all three girls were interested, but as it turned out, only PLB committed and went. This is of course another blog too, but my point is this: When the subject of ‘Who want’s to go to Europe with us?’ came up, and PLB said ‘Me!’ I didn’t think it would be too strange to include her on the trip. She had never been after all, and EMoney and Dewip were not able to go.

Whether this was inappropriate to do or not, I’m not sure… but don’t worry, I learned my lesson.

I’m going to give you the moral of this blog right up front: When traveling… anywhere… make sure you REALLY want to be with your travel mate morning, noon, and night, and make sure you REALLY know that person well, because there are no secrets in travel.

Well, to add just a tad more awkwardness to the situation, PLB and EMoney broke up before the trip. SO now I was taking my friends ex girlfriend to Europe. But I must also say that the other girls on the trip were MacTen, Raps and my sis D’Monk, so it’s not like I was going to be alone with her. It was clearly a girls trip and we were all ready to have fun.

Yea…

NIGHT ONE!

When you travel, particularly when you kind of throw together somewhat of an impromptu trip to Europe, the funds are never flowing like you would like. Everything must be crazy budgeted and you have to be smart about what you spend. Well, PLB started her trip with $100 less than I had told everyone was the minimum they should bring with them. That was not the best start, but hey, I figured maybe she was on a different budget than I was.

Day one in London, after doing the Big Red Bus tour which I swear is the best money ever spent, the five of us ran across London (no joke, we booked it) to catch this walking ghost tour we had heard about. And even though our running had paid off and we were not more than two minutes late, we had either missed the tour or the tour was a ghost itself, because there was no one at the meeting place. As a result, we decided to drown our sorrows of having missed the tour at a pub just up the street from where our tour beginning would have been.

This pub just so happened to be around the corner from Big Ben. The sun was setting as we went into the pub so I requested that after dinner and a drink, we go take a look at Big Ben at night. I had seen the clock, but never at night. I had seen pictures and I knew it was going to be extraordinary, but the whole point was that it had to be at night. The group agreed. The plan was set.

Or so I thought…

We ate dinner and with dinner comes drinks. And with drinks comes more drinks. And with more drinks comes budget out the window kind of drinking. I had a brilliant heart to heart with D’Monk, who I had wanted to bring to Europe since my first trip, Raps and Mac were chatting about their long friendship and PLB sat in the corner rather unsociable. She didn’t talk much. She went to the bar to order her drinks instead of ordering them at the table, which we didn’t realize until later was her way of drinking more than we could monitor.

Before we left the states I specifically asked the girls to always keep a low profile. If you have ever traveled abroad, you know that it is never in your best interested to be American. And of course being polite and respectful should have gone without saying, but I guess I should have said it anyway.

When it came time to leave, Mac did something that I will never forget. She had been doing a ton of babysitting leading up to the trip so she had a good $1000 more than the rest of us had to spend and she offered to cover the entire bill. She said that she had had such a great night and she didn’t want anyone to feel stressed or regret spending the money the next day, so she paid the tab of five very drunk girls. That is the kind of girl she is.

PLB, however, was about to show us just what kind of girl she really was.

We walked out of the bar and headed around the corner towards Big Ben as planned. I tell you, I was so excited. I had been mentioning it through out dinner and drinks and making the girls re-promise that we would in fact go see Big Ben at night, no matter what.

‘No matter what’ did not include PLB not being able to walk and shouting obnoxious things and being all around RUDE to passers-by on the street. I pulled the plug so fast on our excursion out of pure embarrassment. I could not believe she was acting like that. The rest of us made a quick decision to go ahead and spend even MORE money we didn’t have on a cab because we knew PLB would either puke or be thrown off the tube. This was of course right around the time that we were piecing together her ‘bar trips’ and counting the glasses on the table in our heads.

The cab takes us to the street where our hostel is, but there is still a block or so walk. Mac and I quite literally had to carry PLB down the street. Now keep in mind that London is not like Isla Vista in Santa Barbara. There was no one else being carried down the street. There was no one else screaming and making a scene. And I promise you, no one else on that entire street puked on someones doorstep… but PLB did. Mac, bless her heart, stood right there with me while I nearly cried out of hate, embarrassment and shame for my favorite city. Usually I am a good friend during these moments. Usually I am the girl who holds your hair back and scoops the puke out of the sink with my hand, but not PLB. Not when she had just thrown up on London!

We finally made it back to our hostel, and let me just remind you that hostels are usually shared. We had a six person room with only five of us, so there was an Asian gentleman, who spoke no English, who luckily had somewhat of a sense of humor about the situation. He could have easily complained to the front desk and had us kicked out.

Of course I was trying to explain this to PLB, but she was busy being a raging bitch. Oh yes, once we got back to the hostel, she went from crazy American girl on the street to rabid beast with a drinking problem. And most of her fury was aimed towards Mac and I, her rescuers. Raps and D’Monk… yea, they went to bed. Sorry guys… but ya did.

Mac and I, put PLB in the bathroom to finish what she started on someones doorstep and what does she do? She absolutely insists on takeing off her shirt. Lucky Asian guy, more aggravated me.

After about 20 mins of trying to convince PLB that she could not sleep in the bathroom, we decided that we were both about to strangle her and we needed to step out for a moment to gather our sanity. I put D’Monk in charge of the raging girl in her bra. We went downstairs and sat on the front porch of the hostel in our favorite city and talked about how people take us for granted. How we are the friends to have and how we really shouldn’t have invited that crazy bitch.

We were gone maybe 10 minutes. We returned to find Raps and D’Monk sound asleep in their beds. PLB was laying on her back with a mouth full of puke. Lovely. So we sat her up and of course more curse words and accusations and full on swings was all we got as a thank you.

Finally we drug her out of the bathroom and put her on the bed, despite her pushing, swearing and fighting us all the way. I have to say that at this point, I had joined her in the curses and violence. I had had it. I was crying, I was screaming, I was telling her in all seriousness that I would be taking her to the airport if she kept it up. And I meant it too. This was NIGHT ONE guys! I couldn’t even imagine another day with her, let alone 10!

But throughout all of this, Mac stayed very calm, cool and collected.

That is until PLB said and I quote: “THis is your fault anyway [Mac], you shouldn’t have bought all of those drinks.”

Remember how we all ordered everything before Mac offered to pay? Well, Mac remembered because she lost it and literally I had to grab her and pull her off of PLB. I had never and have not since seen Mac attack someone like that. It was like she had just been pushed too far. And it was amazing.

Of course at that point, D’Monk thought that it would be wise to involve herself and so she kicked Mac and I out. But on all accounts, that was fine by us. We took off down the street at a crazy pace that was more floating than walking really. We moved so quickly, crying and laughing with no destination in mind. But we knew once we saw it where we had been heading: McDonalds.

There are only a few times in life where McDonalds is a sight for sore eyes, but this was one of those times. Literally, my eyes were sore from crying. I can’t imagine what the other late night diners were thinking when they saw these two American girls burst in the door, make up running down their cheeks, laughing, gasping for air. But we couldn’t have even explained PLB given the chance.

To this day, I still CAN NOT BELIEVE a grown person could act that way. Swinging and cursing at the people who were just looking out for her. The people who invited her on this trip to begin with. Ever play that game ‘which of these things are not like the other?

‘

Well, if you would have played that with the five of us, PLB was clearly the odd one out that was just kind of a tag-a-long that we had included because we wanted to show her the world.

The next morning she acted like all was well. She even made a joke about how crazy the night had been. But the jokes ended when they were not well received. And then they really ended when we realized that Raps had lost her PassPort in the cab ride which we never would have taken had it not been for PLB.

The rest of the trip we all kept our distance from PLB. By the end of it, we even stopped going sight-seeing together. PLB ran out of money early on so she spent her days hanging around the hostels while we went on our adventures.

I did get to see Big Ben at night on that trip. It was breathtaking.

My favorite part of the whole night, looking back, was after we got back to the hostel and PLB was going crazy. The Asian dude got his English translation dictionary out and got our attention. He looked at us, looked at PLB and said:

“She Cwazy”.

I really couldn’t have put it better myself.