Sadly, we only had two nights at Palmer’s Lodge. This was the morning of our checkout. We put our packs into the luggage room and set off to the O2 center, where we’d seen Harry Potter. A person at the desk of the hostel had told us there was a Waterstone’s Bookstore there, but it was not open during the time we went. It was before noon on that Sunday, and I expect they didn’t open until noon, if they opened at all. Annoyingly, there were no signs posted with their hours, unless I overlooked something.
So we headed back to the hostel, got our packs, and headed for the new hostel. Why were we switching? We’d looked at prices on the internet and two nights at Palmer’s and 3 at Journey’s – St Pancras ended up being a cheaper combination than staying 5 days at either one alone. St. Pancras was also a more central location, which made it a bit easier when trying to get to places around London. I’ll come right out and say the Journey’s was the worst hostel we stayed at. I’ll go into more details later. As of this time, we were only checking in. We were allowed to drop out bags off in the room, even though the beds hadn’t been made. And here’s where I’ll tell you a little bit about the hostel. It’s exterior is rather plain, and it looks like a hole in the wall. The paint job wasn’t very nice and shouted “Cheap? You got it!” The room was ridiculous. 17 beds crammed into the same room that I’d seen some 8 bed dorms in other hostels have. Beds were stacked 3 high in most places. There was no room for baggage. Anywhere you set it, it was in the way of either getting in your bed or even just having a path to walk. The place was also filthy. The baggage spilling everywhere must mean that there is never a way for anyone to do any cleaning. The carpet was stained, dirty, and had a lot of crumbs. There was all sorts of litter behind the beds and just on the floor. Ventilatoin was almost non-existent. There was one small window which partially opened into some small, garbage filled area. Luckily, my bed was right near this window. It provided a bit of circulation. Apparently some of the other rooms have zero windows. I can’t even imagine how terrible that would be. How can you cram 17 people into a room and then not even have ventilation?
The common room and kitchen were similarly small and dirty. Again, no circulation left the entire place really hot. It became unbearable to just sit there after a few minutes if a fan wasn’t blowing on you. It wasn’t blowing anything other than the hot, stale air, but it was at least moving. There were few seats in either the common room or the kitchen, so finding a seat was a pain. The bathroom had one stall our of order and the toilets barely flushed. And you had to straddle the commode to close the door. One of the faucets was dripping. They had a hand dryer, but the towel dispenser was always empty. I’ll tell you about showers later.
Anyways, after we checked in, we headed out. Our first stop was finding a bookstore. There was supposed to be one in the train station, but I think it was also closed because it was Sunday. We asked around and heard rumor of a border about 20 minutes away in Angel. We set off on foot and, after another round of asking about it, were directed to the N1 center wherein lay the Borders! We spent some time perusing (I love bookstores), and I eventually got a book of both Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. I’ve been interested in reading the books for some time, and was happy to find them both for only 3 pounds! Chuck looked around but didn’t get anything.
We wanted to do what my guidebook called the Millennium Mile (which when measured was over 2 miles, but that’s besides the point). We started at London Tower, where we saw the outside of the fortress. There was a group there where some people were firing water balloons from a trebuchet, so we watched that for a little bit. Their aim was horrible! Mental note: I want to build a trebuchet some time in my life. And not just a little one, I want it to be something like 12 feet tall, without the arm extended. Next, we walked to the Tower Bridge, Part of it was under renovations, of course, but it was a neat bridge to cross! The towers in it are large and the railing is interesting to see!
We then walked along the Queen’s Path, which follows the River Thames. We passed a few more bridges, came across a weird looking government building. Some locals called it the “crushed testicle,” which happens to be a pretty accurate description. Impressively, we saw the London Bridge. I do wonder if it’s the same one mentioned in the childhood song “London Bridge is Falling Down.” I must find out. We saw some neat looking buildings, passed a church, an Sir Francis Drake’s old galleon, and then finally to the Millennium Bridge! We’d seen it in Harry Potter 6 not just two days before, and now we saw it for real. It wasn’t as large as I expected it. Well, I didn’t know it was only a foot bridge. It was a neat piece of engineering because there’s not much too it. It’s entirely metal and it doesn’t even appear to have much framing.
Right up the foot path from the bridge is St Paul’s Cathedral. We weren’t able to go inside (I think a service was going on), but it looked rather impressive from the outside. The dome was huge! We sat outside it for a little while, thinking of what to do next. We just decided to continue along the road. We got some more pictures of the other side of St Pail’s and then came across the Royal Courts of Justice, which look pretty awesome! There’s also a pretty wicked dragon statue in the road in front of the building! Further down we came across the Charring Cross station. Around here we got some food from the Tesco again. This time we found the fabled Jammie Dodgers! They were a nice treat! Charles wasn’t too impressed, but I thought they were good. Trafalgar Square was close, so we went back over to see what the person on the plinth was up to. This time it was a guy wearing the shirt of a charity, and he was trying to raise money from up there. We waited around a bit and saw how they changed the people. They brought out a lift and raised up the new person and brought down the old person. Not too exciting, but to think they have to do that on the hour every hour is impressive. The guy who then was up there was boring, so we left.
We rode the tube back to the King’s Cross station. This is where we set out on our search of Platform 9 and 3/4, famous from Harry Potter. The area where Platform 9 and 3/4 should be is under renovation, so the attraction was moved to a spot just around the corner. We even had to wait in a little queue, but we finally got our pictures with the cart which looks like it’s disappearing through the wall. The King’s Cross and Platform 9 and 3/4 in my mind was way different than what actually exists, but I guess that’s the beauty of books, right? I liked my mental picture better. After out picture there we just came back to the hostel. I think we just hung around there for the rest of the night. There’s not much to do when it’s really hot and cramped in the common room, so I just read a bit more in Hyperion while laying on my cramped bed before sleeping. The hostel sucks so much. Filthy, hot and cramped.