Day 24: Ugh Travel.

Today is my travel day from Liverpool and uuuuuuuuuugh it has not gone well.

The challenges really started last night, when for some reason a whole series of Asian girls decided to show up scattered throughout the night in two hour increments, starting at about eight. And for some reason, unlike everyone else in the world, Asians don't have a problem turning on all of the lights in a room where five other people are asleep at 3AM. So that happened a lot and I hardly slept at all. -_-

Then I was almost late checking out because I was on the phone for longer than I had anticipated, but that was totally worth it, so it's okay. :) Except then I learnt from the reception dude that I couldn't get to the train station by bus, which wasn't a big deal until I turned around to see that outside it was pouring Texas-style. You know in cartoons when the person is walking along the side of the road and then someone drives by and they get soaked? Yeah, that was my life for about half an hour as I walked the half mile to the train station.

By the time I got there I was soaked and I had to struggle through the stupid turnstile to the bathroom with my luggage to get dry(ish) and then sit around in the freezing cold station with my wet bags for two hours. During that time I went to get lunch, but the couscous I bought spilled all over the floor and the pudding thing I got was awful. So that sucked. And to make things worse, that stupid train station - I kid you not - had exactly zero trash cans in the whole gigantic place. Not one. When I finally found a maintenance person and asked them why, he said "Security." I personally am not afraid of trash cans, but if I were a safety officer at a train station I'd be just as worried that someone would hand the poor custodians a bomb. And what's to stop them from leaving them under the seats? Or lying around as litter? It was frustrating. :-|

When I finally did get on the train, to my dismay there was not a space to put my luggage, so I had to ride with it all under my feet the whole three hours. And then when I got to London and taking two underground lines, I still had to walk half a mile uphill over cobblestones, then up six flights of stairs with my luggage to get to my room. Ugh.

But then I discovered that there's a white duck and a family of black sonethings and their six babies! Auntie Hannah, can you tell from my pictures what they are? They have spindly legs and a red beak, and the babies are very fluffy and awkward! :)

After I watched them for a while I walked through Holland Park to Kensington High Street, got some dinner at a little Arab-run patisserie, then walked around some and bought a £3 book (Time Travelers' Wife, because the movie was cute) at the Oxfam, a really cool kind of upscale good will that's all for charity. It's really cheap but good quality. Someone should invent that in the States. After that I just dirt of wandered, going into one store having a going-out-of-business sale. They have CRAZY good sales here, it's ridiculous. Don't you just hate it when you find something that's cute, useful, and totally on sale but you don't have the means/intention to buy it? That's what happened. I need to learn just not to go into stores when I don't have money, but this giant polka dotted canvas rolling duffel bag for £15 compared to its usual £75 was just so tempting! I didn't buy it of course, but I wish I had had it back when I was packing for this trip. It would have been perfect. Sigh....

Anyway, now I'm just going to go back up to the (rather strange) Holland Park hostel and relax and read and stuff.

Also, there is definitely an opera happening in the park right outside my window. Wut? O_O