The Blonde Excuse: London Intro.

June 30, 2007

London Intro.

First, I'd like to apologize for how bad I've been about updating my blog lately. Internet in Europe is hard to find and very expensive. Clearly I have internet now, but it's on Brent's computer which doesn't have any of my pictures, so this will have to be a picture-less entry.

Also, I've decided to skip the end of my Italy pictures (Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Tuscany) until I have more time to post. Italy is no longer fresh in my memory while London, Berlin, and Paris are (I'm currently in Paris by the way) so I'd rather post about more recent things and then fill you all in on my Italy adventures with Brent once I'm done traveling.

Anyway, Brent and I flew from Rome to London where we had an amazing trip. It got off to a bad start, though, with the WORST hostel I have ever seen (not that I've seen many). It was the St. Christopher's Inn in London which is actually a top-rated hostel chain throughout Europe so we were very surprised at how disgusting it was. When we arrived, we checked into our room which had some man in it fixing the broken door handle. The room was actually about the size of my closet at home and I'm not even exaggerating. It had bunk beds that you had to shimmy around to get anywhere (so basically it was about 2 feet larger than a twin size bed). There was half-eaten food everywhere and black curly hairs all over our beds. Also, the window was broken and wouldn't close so it was pouring rain INSIDE our room. It took us about five minutes to collect our refund and walk out the door.

We found a Holiday Inn on the other side of the city (the only hotel left in London with any vacancy... apparently we were there during Wimbledon weekend) and paid the 20 pound ($40) cab fare to get there with our gigantic unwieldy backpacks. The price online was 190 pounds for the entire three nights we were going to be there which is about $380. We thought this was a little expensive for a small room in a Holiday Inn but it was all we could get so we took it. Once we arrived, though, our 190 pound weekend was suddenly a 480 pound weekend (??????) which is almost $1000 for 3 days on our budget backpacking trip around Europe. We got a refund for the second two nights but still had to stay for the first. The hotel was fine, but we were then homeless for the next two nights of our stay. My parents tried to find us a place to go but also discovered that everywhere was booked but luckily Brent's dad is a hotel points member and was able to save us with the next two nights at the Sheraton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, London which was absolutely beautiful.

I don't want to get too much into all the things we did in London because I'd like to save that for when I have pictures (hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll be able to get my computer on the internet for a while) but I hope this will hold you all over until then! Thanks for not abandoning me in my blogging hiatus!

Posted by lauren at June 30, 2007 08:48 AM

Comments

Can't wait for the pictures! I clicked on the Sheraton link - wow, what a beautiful place for a couple of backpackers!

Posted by: M&D at June 30, 2007 10:04 AM

you two are so lucky to land on your feet in spite of the bad breaks=== but raining in the room!!??? can't wait for more about London lu g &p

Posted by: G at June 30, 2007 10:16 AM

RLOL! That room sounds disgusting! However, the Sheraton looked extremely nice. It's a far cry from the little, tiny Best Western where we stayed near Paddington station.

As we traveled throughout Europe we found the Ibis hotels to be perfectly adequate. Nothing fancy, but clean. Most of them had on-site dining which was nice for breakfast. We’d grab some fruit and bread and run out the door. They aren’t terribly expensive and almost always are on a subway line and /or near a train station.

http://www.ibishotel.com

Thanks for the update! Can’t wait to read more….

Posted by: 'Tree' at June 30, 2007 03:47 PM

Tree-

Thanks for the recommendation! If we have more trouble I'll definitely remember to look into an Ibis hotel. For now, though, we have all our hostels pre-booked so I think we're going to have to stick with that. Thanks!

Posted by: Lauren at July 1, 2007 03:25 AM

Ewwwww. The rain would not have bothered me, but the little black hairs all over the bed would of made me want to vomit. That is scarier than the hotel in New Orleans that Andy & I stayed at, where you could rent rooms "by the hour" and instead of a cafe in the lobby it had a biker bar! ugh!

Posted by: Jocelyn at July 2, 2007 02:57 PM