Once we had our tickets we got on train number 1 to Edinburgh. Once we got into Edinburgh we found some lunch and ate until it was time to catch our train to London. This was our first long train. It took us 4 and half hours to check to London (which really isn't bad because our train on Thursday to London is 6 hours long). I was super happy on this train because the seat next to me wasn't reserved. So, I got to spread out and just watch the scenery. Here are some of the things/places that I saw.
Here is the Dementor fog at Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is a cute little town that sits right on the boarder between Scotland and England.
Here is Newcastle (which is in England in case you were wondering).
Her's another Newcastle picture.
On our train we saw lots and lots of fields of this yellow flower. We found out on our train ride back to Scotland, that it's rapeseed, which is made into biodiesel fuel. We were pretty convinced that it was probably a weed and only us Americans would be fascinated with it. It was really beautiful to see it growing everywhere.
When we finally got into London, we discovered that it was hot. It's still pretty cool in Scotland, so when we stepped off the train in the steamy London, we were pretty confused. We didn't have very long in London before our train to Canterbury, so we promptly found a McDonald's (we find these really easily...it's a talent). This was where I got disdainful look #1 for my Scottish pounds (the Royal Bank of Scotland (known as RBS) prints their own pounds with Scottish landmarks and famous Scots. These are different from the English pounds that pretty much only have pictures of the Queen. They both can be used anywhere in the UK, but the English really don't like it). Here is how this process went, because it's repeated throughout this trip.
1) I hand the cashier my Scottish pounds.
2) Cashier takes it, scrunches up they're face, (some add in a disdainful lip curl here), turn money over and over in their hands as if it's not real.
3) I begin to anticipate the sure-to-come look of disdain
4) Cashier gives me strange look and acts really offended that I would dare use Scottish pounds.
5) After finally deciding that the money is real, they give me change in a very curt fashion.
After dinner, we walked to the train station (we came in at King's Cross and had to switch to St. Pancras (which we called St. Pancreas throughout this trip because their only a letter apart) which is right across the street from King's Cross). St. Pancreas was a really nice station. They had lots of shops in things. I could have spent real time there. We then got our train to Canterbury.
I would love to go back to Canterbury. We only had about and hour and a half there and it was dark, but from what we could see it was the epitome of a quaint English town. In case you didn't know, Canterbury is famous for it's church which inspired the epics poem, the Canterbury Tales (I'm sure you had to read these in school at some point) written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s. It's about this group of people that are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury to go to Canterbury Cathedral. Each member of the group of travelers told stories to pass the time. (If you want to read any of them here is a website http://www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html. The one that this website will open to is the Knight's tale which is one of the more famous ones.)
Here is Canterbury church.
Here is the outer wall of the city. We thought it was pretty cool.
Canterbury was really nice. I wish that we would have had more time there, but we had to catch a train to Brighton where we stayed our first night. The trip from Canterbury to Brighton had the potential to be interesting. We had to change trains twice, but each time we found our new train pretty easily. The first stop, Grace spotted our next train as we came into the station and at our next change the lady who came and checked our tickets on the train told us exactly where to go. We really lucked out on how easy the train experience was for us.
We got in to Brighton at about 12:30 and walked down to our hotel. Brighton was quit the hopping town at 12:30. There were lots of people out, which was kind of nice actually. We didn't feel like we were the only ones wandering the streets. We also got to see the Brighton Pier lit up.
I know this picture is kind of fuzzy, but the pier just looked really cool.
This next part is when we hit a little bit of speed bump in our plans. We found our hotel (The Royal Albion in case you were wondering) easily enough and walked in to reception. Let me just say, I took one look at the receptionist and knew he would be trouble. I gave him our reservation confirmation paper and my credit card which the reservation was under. He just kind of stared at the paper and said (he had a hybrid of an Indian and British accent) "yes, um, well we don't have room for you, but I will find one at another hotel." We were kind of shocked by this because we had called this hotel yesterday and asked if it was ok that we wouldn't be getting in until after midnight. The girl on the phone said it was fine and that she would mark that on our reservation. Well, I guess that didn't happen. So, this guy calls all of the cheap hotels in Brighton first (I would know because I did a lot of research on hotels in Brighton. I can probably tell you a price for almost every hotel in Brighton. I could have told that man that those hotels were full, because I had already checked them out). Eventually he calls a hotel (which I knew was pretty pricey) and finds us a room. He told us to just come back the next morning and they would pay us the difference in price. Our new hotel was 150 pounds a night and we only had to pay 95. We were pretty satisfied. I asked him what had happened to our room and basically told us that they double booked the room and they gave ours away. This guy kind of had some sass in him. Then, I asked for directions to our new hotel. This is how our exchange ended. I don't think he was too happy with us.
Man: "Will that be biking or driving?"
We just stared at him. I mean really. Biking?
Me: "Walking."
Disdainful look (no Scottish Pounds used in this disdainful look experience)
Man: "I will call you a cab".
Me: "And you will compensate us for that."
Disdainful smile and rapid nodding.
We finally got to our new hotel, which was literally next door to the train station go figure (we walked down a hill to get to hotel number 1). This hotel, the Jurys Inn, was actually a lot nicer. We felt kind of bad for the guy behind the counter because he had to sort out our mess. He was really friendly and really helpful which we found pretty noteworthy because it was 1:30 by hat point. He worked everything out for us and even seemed pretty annoyed with the Royal Albion (at one point he had to call and yell at them because evidently they were supposed to gives us money for the room.) Our room turned out to be really nice. Overall we had a really good day.
That was our Day 1 adventures. Stay tuned for Day 2...
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