I'm trying to catch up!!

Ok, I'm about three days behind on the blog so I am going to try to fit them into one blog!! April 3rd: I could not start this day without saying MY FEET HURT!!!!! I thought that I would be ok to visit a few places on the 3rd, my feet still hurt from the day before but not too bad. Well, it only took like 10 minutes walking on the old cobble stone streets for my feet to become really painful again. I stopped in the morning at a shop just outside the Tower Station on the tube called "EAT". I had the best Chai Latte ever and a delicious carrot bran muffin, so good!!
I really wasn't feeling the Tower of London tour that I paid £17 for, but here are the highlights: great view of Tower Bridge, walking the castle wall(on the topside), and of course, seeing the crown jewels!!! I got to see the famous purple crown and the jewels worn by royals for the past 10 centuries....very cool.
After the Tower, I decided to take the tube up to Hyde Park wrongly thinking that it would be anything like Regent's Park, which you will remember I was so in love with. It wasn't. It just didn't have the same flavor, there were police walking around, lots of teenagers with skateboards and black clothing, it wasn't fun. It was surprising to see the state of it given that it is on the backside of Kensington Palace, the home of Princess Diana. Anyway, I ate a burger on a park bench and then went back to the hostel.
I had a roommate in Globetrotters that was named Roxanne and was moving to London from a small town in Sweden. The night of the 3rd we just sat and talked for like an hour about the differences between America and Sweden, for example, Sweden has nine million people total and Denver and its suburbs alone have over 4 million people. She spoke English really well and thanked American TV shows for helping her learn. Her favorite TV shows are One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl....remind you of anyone....SARAH. She was looking for a job as a waitress so that she could pay the rent in her new flat that she will share with 5 other Swedes. In fact, most of my roommates were living in the hostel looking for jobs, one from Australia (Seriously, there are more Australians in London then there are people from England), one from a country in Africa, and one from Spain (who had SEVEN bags/suitcases that took up the whole floor). There were also two American college students who were studying abroad in Vienna and spending their spring break in London.
The 4th: Yikes. The Friday before I left the States my Mom decided that I needed to travel with a cell phone. She paid for what she thought was shipping on Friday and delivery on Sat (the next day) when it was actually delivery on Sat if you had ordered the phone by 2pm Thursday...confused? Me too. So anyway, the phone didn't ship until Monday and arrived Tuesday after I had already left. So my Mom, because she is the most amazing Mom ever, rushes off to Fedex and gets guaranteed delivery on April 2nd. Well, turns out customs doesn't like temporary visitors receiving packages, they don't like the word "adaptor" or the word "charger" and they won't deliver to hostels....all things that they won't tell you until after you ship the package. So my Mom spends one whole day running around faxing paperwork to customs officials trying to get my package delivered. All the while I can't get ahold of my Mom and can't get any information so I call Fedex on the night of the third. They tell me that the package has cleared customs and that it will be delivered to my hostel on the 6th...when I will be in Edinburgh. So the only option I have is to pick it up myself at Stansted Airport, about an hour and a half outside of London. So I quickly booked a coach ticket to Stansted and the next morning I hopped on the tube to Victoria Station to catch the coach. After I arrived at the airport I started asking around for the FedEx, no one had any idea where I was supposed to go. So finally, after 4 calls from airport security (who were so nice to help me) I figured out that I needed to go to the cargo area of the airport about a mile down the road, "but don't worry there is a bus that runs there....oh, wait, the bus doesn't run on Sat, you'll have to walk". Super. It was kinda nice because it was far enough from the main terminal that it wasn't like walking in an airport, it was more like the English countryside, and there weren't any sidewalks so it was even more authentic. I finally get to the FedEx and they tell me that the package hasn't cleared customs....but if they can find an official then he can clear if for me. So I finally got the package and walked back to the airport. It was nice on the way back to London because I got to chat with the driver who was really funny and described driving in London as "survival of the psychopaths"....seriously London traffic is like NYC traffic meets Boston drivers meets narrow, crazy streets and then everything is backwards.

April 5th: I'm running out of time on the computer so I will be brief! I almost missed the plane to Edinburgh this morning....I left with plenty of time only to find out that the first tube to Heathrow doesn't leave until 6:50am (I was there at 5:45am) and my flight left at 8:50am. Luckily, I convinced a nice British Airways woman to walk me to the front of the line at check-in (which one guy said he had been waiting in for over an hour) and then I hurried through security and made it to my gate with about one minute until they started boarding. I arrived in Edinburgh and hopped on the shuttle to the Edinburgh City Center, it is so amazing, like a city on a huge hill that is old and beautiful. I finally found my hostel after buying a map only to get a message from the desk clerk that there had been an error and they didn't have a bed for me on the third night of my stay. SO they paid for a taxi to my new hostel Edinburgh Youth Hostel which is just as nice...I think, I haven't seen my room yet.