We all take wrong turns sometimes, right?

[.Poppy.]

So a friend and I are in England for the week. We've seen her family and been to Manchester and Banbury and it was great. We got to London and it fell apart.

We booked an Airbnb that seemed nice, good reviews, etc. We got an uber driver to take us there but it was in an apartment we couldn't get into, host wouldn't answer us, AND it was in a bad neighborhood. Our uber driver refused to leave us so I had to call my parents and have them find us a room. At least we are safe.

But, the room is of course expensive and I may be out the Airbnb money if they choose to side with the host and say we didn't "try hard enough" to get into contact with her.

I keep trying to tell myself that it's okay, people make mistakes, you learn and you cope and that's life. But I feel awful. This is my first trip abroad and I feel like I have totally failed. :weep:

[bcalm]

I'd go easier on yourself, these things happen. Making mistakes is part of life and it's okay to make them as long as we learn from them.

I would wait to see what AirBNB say.

[MyNameIsTerry]

You did what you had to, Poppy. What else could you do?

Isn't it only like getting to a house to find the key isn't left in lock box? You call the contact for the property and they don't answer. All you can do is go somewhere else and then put in a complaint to try for your money back. You may not get it but what matters most is that you are safe.

It's good to hear the driver looked after you too. Not all would. Obviously a good person.

I hope you can let this go and get on with enjoying your trip. The rest can wait.

I hope we are treating you well too.

[Mojo61]

Please let us know how you get on Poppy. If there's anything I can do to help just message me as I'm only in Kent so not far from London.

[Buster70]

Hi , on the scale of mess ups it's a small one you are doing great to have come this far and the main thing is you were safe if it was one of my daughters I would just want to know they were safe , I live in the uk and I've messed up much bigger when I was young in several cities , have a good safe trip .

[.Poppy.]

Thank you for all the kind replies :)

My friend has relatives in Banbury so if we were truly desperate we could have gone back and been with them.

Thankfully we were able to get a room in a Holiday Inn with my father's membership and stayed there all three nights.

The AirBnB woman caused massive stress for sure - she called us liars, said we were trying to take advantage of her, wasted her time, etc. She even added phone numbers to her page after we put in a complaint about her saying that she had alllll these numbers we could have called. We had an original screenshot, though, that showed she did not have those at the time we were trying to make the calls!

Anyway, we had a lovely time in London. A lovely time in England all around. I would definitely go back.

AirBnB refunded pretty much all of our money for us and were incredibly helpful, which was wonderful.

Thank you for all of your guys's help and support - it means a lot. Sorry I wasn't able to reply earlier! And Mojo61 - what a kind offer as well.

Hugs to all. :hugs:

[MyNameIsTerry]

Gal to hear you had a good time, Poppy. :yesyes::yahoo:

Yep, we have plenty of idiots over here too...idiots are a race of their own that have infiltrated every other one on earth and spread out like a virus! :roflmao:

It's good to hear you showed up that person to the company.

What did you enjoy? I hope you were treated well in the various places you went. The vast majority of us are likely to think "ooh, you're American, lets have a chat" because we are interested. That's one of the reasons I like this place, you get to meet some fascinating people and hear about things that take you outside what can be a bubble if you haven't travelled much.

[.Poppy.]

Oh, gosh Terry, what *didn't* I enjoy? :D

Let's see...after flying into Manchester we were picked up by my friend's great aunt and second cousin and we went to her great aunt's house in Todmorden (hope I spelled that right). Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. She lives in part of a 300+ year old farmhouse that is gorgeous. The village is so cool...I love how everything is just so walkable, just park and you can wander around the entire town. We took the bus to Hebden Bridge (again, hope I spelled that right) and hung around the canals. The scenery up there is just amazing.

The next day we we went into Manchester and visited the old libraries - my friend and I are both really into books. :) Then we just wandered around. We stayed at an AirBnB there but the guy running it was really nice and helpful. We got lost a couple of times but it wasn't too bad...we found the gay bar district when we were lost at night and it just seemed like such a fun place to be, if we hadn't been tired and hungry we would have stayed.

From there we went to see her second cousin and her husband in Banbury. We got to walk around that village and see those canals, which were also really great. The two of them took us to Stratford to see all of the history there and the Shakespeare sights - we got there too late to be able to go into any of them, but we also got to see them without a crowd so I'm not complaining :)

Then, we went to London where we saw the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, the British Museum, went to the Ice Bar, saw and took pictures of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, and then we headed to the Eye and took a ride on that. We finished up by walking along the river and seeing the Globe Theatre, which wasn't too far from our hotel.

So, there were some glitches...the AirBnB, plus upon leaving almost every one of my flights was delayed and my friend ended up getting lost in Venice on her way to her dig site. But no bother. I had a GREAT time and I loved all of it...all of the history there and being able to stand in front of places I'd only ever heard of. Imagining all the people in the past who had stood there too.

I would definitely return :)

I will say I got asked, "what do you think of Trump" more times than I thought I would. For the record, I do not think good things. And I came back to the US having missed the news coverage of the Dallas shootings and my mom had to catch me up...which was hard for her as it was a very emotional thing to happen, but sadly a common one these days.

I too love talking to people from different places, it's so interesting how unique everything is. I loved how much public transportation England has, from trains to trams, to the underground in London. Where I live, we have Amtrak (which is too expensive for most people to use), a very small busing system, and Uber. Public transportation is a very foreign concept; everyone drives and almost nowhere is really walkable unless it's really small.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Ha ha. yes, you will get that about Trump. We tend not to know about your candidates as most people don't follow US news. We know Trump from TV shows like The Apprentice and we had a documentary on his rallies not long ago. People over here are curious about it all and who supports him. We know Hillary too but only really because of Bill, not because of her own work. Really, who over here knew Obama existed until her became president? Not a lot of us, and some of us probably only because it was more of an issue due to being the first black man who could become president...Hillary will have attracted the same extra press over here. Otherwise most of us don't know your politicans.

The British Museum is amazing. Did they have any visiting displays? They've had Egyptian ones in the past which look good. When I went there was a huge African one and upstairs in a small room there were Samurai Sword collections. The African displays were amazing. I loved the Greek too, which is a permanent feature such as the Elgin Marbles.

The Natural History Museum is very good too. I love the dinosaurs. I remember going up this escalator:



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Entrance_to_the_Earth_Galleries_of_the_Natural_His tory_Museum_(London,_2002-06-07).jpg



I know what you mean about the difference in transport. It's a small world over here compared to your country but when I go got London I am always amazed by the tube. Every minute or so another train coming along. Then I would come back to my city and wait 45 mins for a bus in the off peak hours and spend it moaning about how crap my city was! :biggrin:

Banbury and Stratford are nice. With the celebrations for the Bard recently I bet there was a lot more there than when I went many years ago.

We have loads of small towns & villages and a load of canal networks. People take holidays on canals and hire the narrow boats to pilot through the networks.

I bet you would have loved places like Snowdonia too. The scenary is amazing. Did you get to see much of the scenary as you travelled? It can be impressive and it will be very different to your country's.

Staying in old cottages & houses is nice. We have various online cottage companies that renters pay to host their homes for holidays. There are some that cover things like converted light houses, follys, wings in old huge houses, etc. There was one I saw that was a tower and on the top they had put in a big Jacuzzi! Many of the cottages are on working farms too so there is plenty of wildlife around.

[.Poppy.]

They did have an Egyptian exhibit as well as an "under the sea" Egyptian exhibit that was fun to see.

The scenery was gorgeous. I loved the canals and think it would be so cool just to travel on them. I liked the Penines where we were because the hills were amazing. We didn't get to see any coastline but that would have been nice to see as well. I know if I go back with my mom she's going to want to see Scotland too.

A lot of the other scenery as we traveled out of Manchester, to Banbury and then London wasn't too different from my local scenery. Lots of green hills and farmland. It was still gorgeous and the weather - I couldn't get over how nice it was! Her cousins complained that it was too cool but coming from 100+ degrees it was a nice break for sure! Good weather to actually go outside and do things.


I have to say I don't know too much about your country's politics, either, except for what makes the national news. I'm not thrilled about either political candidate but the Trump/Pence team is truly terrifying so I really hope they don't get voted in. Unfortunately, I'm predominately in a "red" (republican) state and our voting system is uber complicated with electoral colleges instead of just the popular vote, so even though I WILL be voting, my vote will just get absorbed into all the republican votes coming out of my state and essentially won't matter as Trump/Pence will get our votes. Lord help us all.