So I made it to Leeds, and to my astonishment it isn’t the city that I thought it was going to be. When I looked at the map I saw, York and then not that far away was Leeds. So I kind of got the feeling that since I know York is a big city, that Leeds must be pretty small. This view was reinforced when I reserved a room online and the map to the hostel showed basically a tiny city. When I got here though I was surprised to see skyscrapers and traffic jams.

The city itself has some of the nicest people I’ve met during this year’s adventure. People, not necessarily everyone, but the people working have been incredibly pleasant. For example, I get to the hostel and the first thing the lady says to me is, “’ello love.” I don’t care who you are, it just sounds nice. I went and bought some chips and a beer at a small store earlier and as I was almost to the door, the girl says, “bye” to me. If she had said it while I was bagging my stuff or when I was still in front of her it wouldn’t have been anything special, but I was almost out the door and she was ringing up some one else’s stuff. The bus driver asked for the address of the hostel I was going to and told me when to get off, he even gave me directions to the address. I guess to some people reading this it may not seem that special, but in much of my travels a lot of people seem to be annoyed with having to do anything more than their job. Buying a train ticket is fine if you don’t ask any questions, but when you’re confused and want them to explain, or if you can’t hear them, they get frustrated with you.

I didn’t spend a lot of time walking around Leeds, after all I really didn’t come here for any particular reason. I did though spend about 2 hours seeing what the main area had to offer, and some of it is really impressive. One of the things that I was impressed with was the renovation of older buildings. Every where I went there were huge old buildings that have been converted to markets, shopping centers, pubs, and other things. It’s always nice to see that older buildings are used instead of demolished and replaced with new. If it weren’t for the rain, I could see this being a great place to live.

Okay, so tomorrow I head to Edinburgh at 11 in them morning and arrive at 4. All good, right. I mean, I got a ticket to the place that I want to go, the bus will get me there with some daylight to see a little bit of the city, everything is just going great. So about an hour ago I decide that I should book a room…the first results I get is there is only room available in all of Edinburgh for the times that I need, and it costs 189 euros–in other words, $200 a night. I did manage to find better prices after trying a few other sites, but I have to change hostels each day. I was so worried about the cost that I was thinking about renting a car instead and sleeping in the car… it still sounds like a good idea and plus I’d get to travel at my own pace for the remainder of this trip. So I still may rent a car.