Sunday 4/18

Day nine.

The nice part about Sunday was that our roommates left early, so we got to get up and be noisy and take our time. Since our first bus didn't leave until Monday morning, we spent the day going around the city and writing down the hours of various businesses--and watching remote-controlled car races in the mall. Just as random as it sounds. Our plan, since we didn't have enough money for the hostel for one more night, was to hop around places until as late as possible, then wait at the bus station for the 6:35 departure.

The hostel owner was really nice and let us hang out there until 5 p.m. that night, then we started our adventure. Our first stop was Starbucks, where Courtney got a hot cocoa and a cookie so we wouldn't get kicked out until it closed at 7. We sat there and worked on word searches that Alice had brought until we went crazy, then we just talked and made a video.

Our next stop was KFC, where we all bought supper and sat around talking and studying and doing nothing until it closed at 10.

Then McDonald's for dessert until 12, where we wrote a bunch of crazy letters and played MASH.
After that, we ran out of places to go, so we went and sat in the bus station. Since it's connected to the mall, we thought we were going to get lucky and be able to sit inside where it was warm the whole night. The security had other ideas, however, and by 12:30 we and several other older men who were there were kicked outside. The guards outside weren't supposed to let us stay there either, but I guess they didn't really care. We huddled up on a bench and used Courtney's towel (the only dry one) and Alice's extra sweatshirt as blankets. We took turns being in the middle to share warmth, but it was still quite chilly. We talked to the guys for a bit; one was a grandpa who had been hiking in the highlands and was bringing presents home to his nieces, another had had his ID stolen so was living outside the bus station, and a third man just sneaked onto the buses to sleep. To keep ourselves awake, we talked about random stuff and sang songs.

Technically this is going into Monday, but around 4 a.m. the police came by and stopped to check our IDs. They were looking for a missing girl from Manchester and had seen us on the cameras, so came by to check if one of us was her. After we assured them that that was not true, they offered to drive us back to the police station so we could sit in the warmth before catching our bus. One of the men at the hostel had suggested doing that in the first place, so we definitely should have listened to him. Anyway, we said yes please and sat there until 6, when we walked back to the station to start our endless day of travel.


Almost there!