One last misadventure... hopefully

Ok, so maybe I have a little blog-fodder left for you guys after all. But only because I'm an idiot. Before you run screaming to the comments section to defend my honour, observe:

My 'planned' trip is over. Now all that's left is for me to make my way back to London for my Sept 1st flight. It's a morning flight, so really I have to be back on the 31st so that I can return Suzy home before the rental agency closes at 6. I have been hoping to avoid travelling on the same routes twice, so I didn't really want to chunnel it back, which left me with the Saint Malo Ferry system to consider. At first I was going to happily go back to the channel tunnel, as my first quotes were coming up at 90 Euros for travel times of 8 to 10 hours.

Then we (Anna, Steph and I) stumbled across an evening ferry that would only take 4 hours and cost far less. So we booked it. This now created two situations for me: one, I would be getting into the UK at midnight, and would therefore have to find a hostel or hotel that would allow me a late check in, and two, I would now have an extra day, the 30th to travel - the chunnel would have required all my time, but the ferry would allow a less rushed journey back.

Oh, beautiful England, I don't know why I wasn't looking
forward to seeing you again.

I didn't really want to go back to London any earlier than I had to. It's a lovely city, but it's very expensive and I'd already seen everything that I wanted to. I had known this back in Amsterdam and mentioned it to Dennis, who, after spending one last night in London, had requisitioned a suggestion for me from his London friends: a little city called Bath, about 200km West of London. It was also only an hour and a bit ride from the Ferry, and upon finding a hostel that could check me in at 1am, that became my new plan.

And then I became mildly retarded.

Clicking through the booking site, as I had many times before (this was a Hostel International place, which was my preference during the majority of the trip), I booked myself the date at which I got off the Ferry - August 30th, and happily clicked accept. But you see, I didn't actually want the night of the 30th. Because my Ferry got in at midnight, yes, I would be arriving on the 30th, but really, I wanted the evening of the 29th. Do you know how hard it is to find another hostel at 1 in the morning?

Well, neither do I. For fate it would seem, was on my side. Perhaps karma was rewarding me for not subjecting the nice women of Europe to the Russ Challenge, but either way, the heavens were smiling on me this day. Normally I would just book a room, write down my confirmation number, and be on my way. But this time, I had altered my usual routine to include an actual email to the hostel to make certain they could check me in at such a late hour. I received an email back, confirming that they could. So, I left the internet terminal and was on my way.

Luckily, I didn't have much to do this particular day. My ferry wasn't scheduled to leave until 8:25pm, and I had already parted ways with Steph and Anna the night before. So I had an entire day to kill, and not much to do besides lay on the beach and eat baguette. Not that I was complaining, but one man can only eat so much baguette and lie on the beach for so long.

There's also only so much mugging that a man can do too...

As boredom overtook me, I returned again to the internet terminal, seeing if for some reason I would have a stack of new emails, despite the fact that it was 3am back home. But I did. The brilliant, wonderful, glorious man at the hostel had double checked my booking and noticed my error. I quickly replied back to him to see if there was any way I could change the booking.

Have you ever sat at your computer, hitting refresh over and over, waiting for an important email? Well, 10 agonizing minutes and a few thousand refresh clicks later, a new message finally appeared. And, in typical 'if they made this a movie, you wouldn't believe it' fashion, they had exactly one bed in the entire hostel still available for the night, and he could change the reservation for me.

So, I just thought I would share that little nugget with you guys, despite how stupid (but lucky) it made me look...


But wait. What's that, you say? There's more...

Apparently Karma realized that it didn't owe me anything. So, seeing that I was again taking a Ferry, it stepped in to re-balance the universe. I only had to wait 4 and a half hours this time, with an additional 5 on the boat. However, unlike the Germany to Denmark crossing, this time it was completely out of my hands. The ferry itself was 2 hours late, rather than me just being unable to get an earlier booking. But this still meant that with the delays and ride to Bath, I didn't arrive at the hostel until 4:30am. Which, since there's an hour time difference between the UK and the rest of Europe, was really 5:30 according to my body.

Only 2 hours behind schedule, plus they recommend you get
there early, so another 4.5 hour wait at the docks. But it
made for a much nicer picture, I suppose.

Luckily the hostel held true to it's 24 hour check-in policy, and I was able to catch 5 hours sleep before hitting the road back to London. Of course, seeing that bad things come in threes, I have just been made aware that it's a Holiday Monday in the UK tomorrow, so now I'm not even sure if the rental agency will be open to take back Suzy. Of course, they're closed on Sundays too, so I can't take her back today and their voice mail doesn't say one way or the other, so I guess I'll just have to stick to the plan and hope for the best. I might even keep you guys posted...