After we dropped Lorien & Taya off at FSY with their friends for 6 days, we took a short trip up to London. Cadence leaves on her mission soon & we asked her to pick one trip she wanted to take before her mission. She chose London, so off we went.
Living in Europe is wonderful. We can get pretty much anywhere by car/van as long as you're willing to road trip it. London was no exception. We drove 6 hours from Germany to Calais, France. A few days earlier we booked the ferry to take us (& our van) across the English Channel from Calais to the white cliffs of Dover. I had forgotten how expensive the ferry was! (Next time we'll be taking the chunnel)
Once we got to the ferry, it took about an hour & a half to make it through security checks, passport control, & onto the actual boat. It was almost like checking in at an airport. It took FOREVER.
But we made it. The boat ride was almost 2 hours start to finish & Canyon & I soon realized we get really really seasick. The two of us were nauseous the entire boat ride. We tried to eat at the cafe on board, but that made it worse. We ordered some fish & chips, nuggets, fries, & veggies. I could only stomach the veggies. Canyon couldn't eat any of it. But the others ate everything & said it was completely flavorless. They said it was like eating water which made me laugh. That's what we get for eating food on a boat.
The white cliffs of Dover were beautiful.
Once we docked the boat, it took another 30-40 minutes to get off the boat. We were SO happy to be driving again. London was about 2.5 hours from the cliffs so we still had a long drive ahead of us. We also had to get used to driving on the WRONG side of the road.
They city was crazy to drive in. Trek is a saint for doing it. We drove around & looked at all the beautiful buildings.
We even passed the Tower of London
and the tower bridge which was super cool.
We could see Big Ben & Parliment on our drive too. That made us SUPER excited to be there.
Then we arrived at our hotel. I don't know why everything has to be such an adventure for us, but it always is. This hotel was a DIVE. As we pulled up, we had 3 people knock on our window & tell us to "run away" from this place. They warned us that the hotel was a scam, that they had taken their money without giving them a room, that the rooms were filthy, & that 3 floors had to share one small bathroom. They said there was mold, bugs, & disarray everywhere. I was immediately terrified.
We booked it (Parkside Hotel near Hyde Park) on booking.com which is usually a very safe way to book a hotel. It was bad. We booked a room that fit 6 people which we quickly found out doesn't exist at all. . . even though we already paid for it. They refused to give us a refund, so they offered us 2 rooms in the basement instead. We got online & started trying to find a hotel anywhere else that available rooms for the 6 of us, but everything was fully booked or WAY too expensive. We were STUCK with this hotel whether we liked it or not. We had to take the 2 basement rooms.
As nasty as it was, I considered us lucky because our 2 rooms had their own bathrooms (moldy, but our OWN) so that was a win for us. All the other 15 rooms in the hotel had one shared bathroom on the 2nd floor & it was NASTY. Ours weren't super clean either, but I could deal with it knowing nobody was going to walk in on me showering. The rooms were tiny. It barely fit one bed (2 in the boy's room) & our suitcases, but it was fine. We triple checked for bed bugs (because that's how nasty this place was) & then decided we would survive this little adventure. OH!! And there wasn't a key to mine & Cadence's room. So basically we couldn't lock our room. The guy that checked us into the hotel was sweet, but it was his first day of work there & he was ready to quit because of how gross it was. I felt so bad for him (unless he was part of the con to begin with. I hope not. He seemed nice.). He told us that whomever was on duty tomorrow would be able to get us a key for our room.
After all the drama with the hotel, we decided to go for a walk. We found a 5 Guys & were SO happy to have yummy food for dinner. This was the first time the boys had ever had 5 Guys, & they LOVED it.
After that we went back to the "hotel" & watched an episode of "Sherlock" so Bladen could see all the London sites we were going to be seeing on our vacation. Luckily we downloaded the episode before we left because SURPRISE! Our hotel didn't have wifi either.
We finally just called it a night & decided to make the next day amazing even though we struck out on our hotel.
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