I woke up that next morning and went in search of Laura, a girl who was going to be on the same flight as me to Fez and was another exchange student to Al Akhawayn. She was staying in the same hostel so I went to her room and kind of stood outside it. I knocked but no one answered so I kind of awkwardly continued to stand there while I pondered my next course of action. She came walking down the hall at the very moment I was contemlating the door and we were both quite relieved to have met up. We checked our bags in for the morning and took the underground to trafalgar square just to have a look around. We were there probably a grand total of about 15 minutes before we decided we should get a head start on getting to the airport. Our flight was at 3:15 and this was about 11:00. We got our bags from the hostel and headed to Victoria station. The London underground is not what I would consider handicap accessible. A very select stations are equipped with "lifts" and those are very descrete. You have to ask someone where it is and they lead you behind some ticket desk and through a disguised door then do an elaborate secret knock. Once the doors open, you are escorted into an elevator roughly the size of a broom closet where you and the attendant awkwardly squeeze and you suddenly become painfully aware that you forgot to put deodorant on that morning, or maybe you did and he didn't, you're too close to differentiate. Ok, they're not that bad but close. Anyways, that was fairly irrelevant since the only time I was lucky enough to find a lift was in the Heathrow station. The other times consisted of standing in the flow of people right before the two staircases and two escalators hoping that someone would take pity and grab your bag for you and that no one would knock you over. I had an ingenious idea of tying a rope around my waist and my bag and dragging it along but unfortunately, with so many people running about on incredibly important business, it would usually get knocked off of its wheels and I would drag it for a couple more yards, futilly hoping it would magically right itself.
The whole process was made more difficult due to the fact that Laura had two bags which meant she ended up having to tend to three bags, two of which were 20kg. The wonderful people who did help us would usually end up getting squashed by one or more of the bags as they fell down the escalator which would, understandably, rather put them off going any further with us. Once we arrived in Victoria station, it started raining and everyone was gathering in inconvenient places so Laura decided it would be easiest for her to go get both of us tickets for the bus ride to Stansted which was about 45 minutes away. I readily agreed to this because I was getting exhausted from dealing with my bag so I was instructed to come along at my own pace and meet her in the station. I began my trip over there and then my heart dropped like a pair of wet shorts. Victoria station was packed with people. I could barely get through, conspicuous though I am on crutches dragging a bright red suitcase behind me attached with a bright yellow bit of rope. I tried paging her both in the station and the bus loading terminal. No answer, later, I heard that she had paged me as well but the whole thing was a disaster. A kindly guard came over and asked if I needed help and I said that I've lost my friend and I have a plane to catch to Stansted. He informed me that there are no buses that leave from Victoria to Stansted. I would have to go to Liverpool Street and get on the train from there.
I'm sure you can imagine my horror. It was one by this point, the time that we were hoping to arrive at Stansted. I had to change some money in order to get a bus ticket to Liverpool street then I hopped on the bus, expecting it to be about 20 minutes long. An hour later, I got off of the bus and tried to drag my bag across the street. It promptly fell over as a bus was headed my way. A very nice Malaysian boy came running out and rescued me and took me down to the ticket people. It was 2:05 at this time. I was informed that I justed missed the train and would have to wait for the 2:10 one. If you do the math, this clearly doesn't work. The train ride takes 40 minutes and the check in closes at 2:45.
After coming to this realization, I burst into tears and the Malaysian boy led me out and sat me down on a bench as I tried to tell him what was wrong since he seemed very worried and confused. He ran off and got me coffee which I tried to get for him to thank him for his help but he just smiled and made me drink it, which really calmed me down and then he left. I decided that crying wasn't going to get me to Morocco so I went in search of wi-fi. I found it at the trusty McDonalds. If you're every traveling with a computer, McDonalds is absolutely your friend because of its free wi-fi, I've used it numerous times this trip and have become quite fond of it, I believe it is called "the cloud" for the wireless connection. Unfortunately, they didn't have any outlets so I hiked the length of the train station and found a pub with a table right next to an outlet. Amazingly enough, I got the McDonalds wi-fi from there as well so I spent the next four hours looking for a plane ticket to Fez as soon as possible. This happened to be through Dusseldorf, leaving at 7:15 the next morning so I took it. I hopped onto the train to stansted and then tried to figure out how to get to the hostel I had decided to stay at called Greenways. No one had heard of it. I was told by the bus driver to just take his bus to Little Haddington and then catch a cab from the pub there to Greater Haddington, where the website said the hostel was.
I was a little nervous to put my faith in a cab since I only had 4 pounds and some pence on me, they assured me it shouldn't be much more than that but who knew exactly? By this time it was quite dark. The bus dropped me off at this pub in the middle of no where and I drug my bag inside. They were just closing. It was a beautiful little pub with dark wood and white plaster walls and ceiling. I asked how to get to Greenways and no one knew but they all got out their phones and started texting their friends to see if they knew. The bar tender said he would take me as soon as he was done there. I decided since they were being so nice to me, I should give them my patronage. I had half a pint of guiness which was wonderful, especially since I had not eaten all day or most of the day before. We drove around for awhile looking for the hostel and finally found it, it was actually just a couple of rooms in a prefab building behind someone's house but they had a nice kitty named Rosie who had a very squished face and was very fluffy. We fought for awhile with the Ryanair site because you are required to print off the boarding pass four hours before the flight and the site wasn't working but the poor landlord who was suffering from gout had to come out and he got it to work.
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