anticipation...

so we haven't really planned much of our europe trip, despite the fact that we'll be there in less than a week. that's out of character for me, who usually delights more in the planning than in actually experiencing the trip, but we've been so busy wrapping up things on this end that we've just run out of time. we realized our mistake when we popped online this afternoon to check out hostel prices for london and realized that most of the good hostels no longer have availability for the days that we'll be there next week. fearing a terrible experience like our arrival at the city groove hostel in auckland two years ago, we reserved our beds immediately when we finally did find one that looked halfway decent. from our budget accommodation experiences in new zealand, we've learned that the main things we're looking for are, in this order, cleanliness, size (the smaller the better), location and price. our booking with palmer's lodge - hillspring got us what we wanted on the first two items, if not the last two, so i think i'm happy. it's a good ways out of town but close to the tube, so we'll just have to plan to go into the city for the whole day and not be able to pop back in at the hostel for lunch. free breakfast, free internet, interesting old building...there are plenty of opportunities for this to be a good experience. we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

-rachel