Getting to the Kingdom is a ROYAL Pain

But upon arrival in foggy Londontown, all pains were eased! Almost. I think that everything that possibly could have gone wrong did go wrong on my journey from Toledo to London Thursday afternoon/evening/night. Some mishaps were my own culpa, but some were inevitable...

1. Forgot to check the timetable for trains to Madrid. Turns out the earliest train I could catch wouldn't leave me enough time to get to the airport from the train station so I would have to pay 30 euro for a cab. Fail.
2. Had to leave work early to catch instead the bus from Toledo to Madrid. Power walked to the bus stop to take the bus from Zocodover to the bus station. Sore legs. Fail.
3. Metro from bus station to airport look 20 minutes longer than anticipated. Fail.
4. Was not aware of the EXIT FEE to get out of the airport Metro station. Tried to swipe an expired ticket for a solid five minutes before realizing that I had to buy a new one. Fail.
   
5. Security line for Terminal 1 was a 30 minute stroll from Metro station. By this point I had 10 minutes until the doors of my plane closed. Ergo...
6. SPRINTED through endless hallways to the security line. With a backpack. Fail.
7. Got to the security line only to discover that I didn't have the necessary stamp on my ticket to pass through so the lady explained to me where to go. Sweating from running, I ran to the RyanAir office and demanded a stamp muy pronto. Fail. Ran back to security.
8. Chose the passport control line with the OCD stamper. He took an entire minute to line the stamp up JUST SO on the line. Halfway through stamping, he decided it wasn't straight enough and had to correct it. I couldn't yell at him for fear of being put on the terrorist watch list, so I just had to sit there and wait. Fail.
   
9. Sprinted again to my gate, the almost-very-last gate at the furthest away terminal-within-the-terminal. Fail.
10. Finally got to the gate just in the nick of time, red-faced, sweating, out of breath, only to discover a GIANT line in front of the gate.......they hadn't even boarded yet. The plane was DELAYED. Fail.
11. The Bacon Wallet and I made it safely to London. Double Win.
12. Forgot the address of my hostel. Fail.
13. Managed to find every non-English speaker in London in the process of asking for directions to my hostel. Fail.
14. Made it to the hostel. Win.
15. It was the wrong hostel. Fail. Turns out there are two Clink hostels...Clink78 and Clink261. My reservation was at Clink 261 but the Indian man I talked to directed me to Clink78.
16. Found the right hostel. Win.
17. Hostel room had 18 people. FAIL. Weirdest experience ever. There was a man there who I'm pretty sure was not registered to stay in this room. His stuff was on my bed when I got there and I had to move it to the floor. Then he apologized for taking my bed and hopped into what I thought was his actual bed. But then about an hour later, some girl came in and I heard her wake him up and say "Um, excuse me? I think you're in my bed....." and he apologized and hopped into another vacant bed. Sketch. Also, the beds were only separated by a tiny wall that reached halfway to the end of the bed. So if the person next you is a sprawler, there is a strong possibility that his or her legs will be thrown onto you in the middle of the night.
    
18. Phone decided to not be functional, so I couldn't call Annie or Emily at 1 am to tell them that I wasn't actually going to meet up with them since I was so darn exhausted from traveling.

Next post will detail all the happy parts of London! But first I had to rant and rave.