Three Little Sickies

Yep, by some stroke of luck we are all, to some degree, sick. Ali and I have sore throats and Sarah's neck hurts, which is usually a precursor to her being sick. I think it was only a few days ago that Ali said something like, oh maybe we won't get sick at all! Wishful thinking... so, cross your fingers and toes, folks, and let's hope that we don't get worse. For me, at least, the result is feeling lethargic and sort of uninspired to do much, which is unfortunate here, when we have such natural beauty surrounding us. Edinburgh really is a beautiful city, with the sea and rolling hills visible in the distance. The Edinburgh castle towers above the city, right in the central area, so it's an impressive site on all of our walks.

So, by now this is pretty obvious and maybe a bit outdated news, but we decided to head straight to London from Amsterdam. The hostels/hotels in Belgium were pretty spendy for a place we knew little about, so we used our Eurail passes to get to Brussels (so at least we made it there!) and then took the Eurostar train (and through the Chunnel) to London. Sarah had emailed a London hostel situated in Greenwich (embarassingly, Ali and I had both thought it was "Green-witch" until the customs officials laughed at us in Belgium), and we met some very delightful English people on the Eurostar who gushed about Greenwich when we told them we might be staying there.

They were an English woman, her mother, and her husband, and they asked us questions about where we were from and where we were going - we apparently sounded Canadian to them, with nicer accents than most Americans. They also clued us in on some of the British lingo - transport, not transportation; crisps, not chips; chips, not fries; ta-mah-to, not tomato - and told us that yes indeed, they do eat beans on toast for breakfast. The woman let us use her cell phone to call to confirm with our hostel our reservation, but unfortunately... they never received the email, and they were already booked. We hoped our English friends might offer to take us to their home, but alas, no. So, arriving in London, we tried the hotel reservation desk, where the woman claimed only hotels costing around $100 a night were available, and hoped we could find an open Internet cafe or something to search for ourselves.

So, around 7 or 8 in the evening, we found ourselves across the street in a phone booth, trying to call the hostels on numbers that weren't working, when a man asked us if we wanted to use his cell phone. He then introduced himself - Carlos - and upon hearing that we were planning to stay in a hostel, he launched into some tirade against hostels and how unclean or whatever, that we looked like 3 nice American girls who shouldn't stay in some horrible hostel, and that his brother was supposed to stay in that Travelodge over there but had gotten in a car accident and so he offered us the room.

We had to clarify a few details - so yes, parents, we were cautious - and found out Carlos and his wife were staying in a different hotel, and the room in question was supposed to be for his brother who couldn't make it. We had to make it clear to him that we weren't planning to pay much in the hostel when he originally offered the room for 4 nights for 180 pounds. Unfamiliar to the exchange rate, we weren't entirely sure how much that would be in dollars - we frantically calculated how much that might be per person per night, and eventually, he offered the room at 150 pounds total (so around $80 per person for the 4 nights at the way the exchange rate is right now - more than we'd pay at a hostel, but an incredible deal for a hotel).

He gave us the confirmation email about the room, so I'll have to double check on the amount that it originally was, but I think the reason he was willing to reduce the amount was because there was no way he was going to be able to get a full refund on the room anyway, and also, I think he genuinely wanted to give us the deal. Anyway, he never even got our names and we just paid him in cash after he checked us into the room, and, tada! We had a hotel room just a hop, skip and a jump away from King's Cross Station (oh, and of course we saw Platform 9 and 3/4).

London was a whirlwind of amazing sites and food - we wished we could have stayed longer, for sure. We'll have to do more on that later. Oh and so now we are in Edinburgh, but we leave tomorrow for Paris. We decided that, due to the cost of transportation, we would skip Ireland. Even though Ireland is covered by our Eurail pass, the UK is not, so getting there, and then getting away, would just be added expenses. But, we think we might go to Portugal with our extra time, later on. We'll keep you all updated!

So we fly to Paris around 6 p.m. tomorrow evening! Au revoir!