It's my party and I'll never cry because I really don't want to.

T-minus 6 days to takeoff, my friends. Over the last two days my older sister and I have been making hostel reservations like it's 1999. I have officially booked all of our hostels in the UK and Ireland. I believe Tracie still has two more cities to book.

The hostel reservation process has been relatively painless. My younger sister got in on the action reserving our hostel in Dublin on the way back. The only complaint I have is that London has way too many options and I felt like most of them were overpriced. However, I do realize that London is INCREDIBLY expensive and therefore most of the hostels are, in fact, overpriced. I did London last because I hate making decisions when there are so many options.

If you really think about it, I'm responsible for our happiness in London. Our entire 3 night stay in London could become a disaster with the wrong hostel. It's a lot of pressure... let me tell ya. Location was incredibly important. Originally the hostel I was looking at was $20 a night but so far out of the city, we'd be paying like $10 a day for tube fare. That didn't make any sort of sense at all. So I looked around the train station where we will arrive from Paris. I found a decently priced hostel at $30 a night but it had abysmal ratings (especially with security) and that made me super nervous.

I was so close to booking it but I had that gut feeling that there had to be something better. So I kept looking. I pulled up the map on Hostelworld.com and looked at the hostels by location. I really wanted something kind of close to all the awesome London stuff... the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament. How cool would it be to wake up every morning walk half a block and see downtown London laid out before me.

I'm all about walking. I absolutely hate trains and buses with a passion of a thousand burning suns. This of course makes no sense since our main mode of transportation through Europe are TRAINS! Imagine my delight when I was able to convince my sisters that we should rent a car to drive around England. If I could have walked the entire trip in Europe, I probably would have. Now understand my hatred of public transportation doesn't prevent me from taking it. My refusal to drive in downtown Chicago is much greater than my hatred of public transportation. But I digress... I apologize...

Anyways, there were hostels close to Hyde Park that didn't look so bad but I didn't want to spend more than $35 a night, which I have decided is a feat especially in downtown London. The hostels in Hyde Park (which is still relatively close to the touristy areas but we'd still have to take the darn train ride) were like $40+ but that was too much.

As I was looking over this map, I felt like it was hopeless. I was either going to have to book the hostel with the bad security or pay more than 40+ a night. But then I'm looking on the map and I see this dot about a block south of Westminster Abbey. I clicked on it and the price was right. So I read the reviews and they were generally very good. It's average rating was 76% and the rating for location was 85%. I almost cried. I have spent 5 days looking at all these freaking hostels in London. At this point, I was almost certain London and I were not going to get along. I was going arrive there and start throwing things at the first Londoner I saw out of sheer frustration.

So my friends, I believe I have found the perfect hostel in London. We will see how this holds up when we arrive but it was $30 a night, had good security, AND superb location. Holla! I believe I win the prize for best hostel picker ever.

The hostel booking for Stonehenge was pretty easy. We're staying at the YMCA in Bath. I know! I was as surprised as you are that the Y still rents out rooms. It was a little above my price range at $35 but I figured we're only there one night and we get ALL sorts of free stuff. I figured with the amenities it was worth it.

After Stonehenge, we're off to Lyme Park (used in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice) and maybe a side trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon. I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan but if it's close... why not? Anyway, our base for central England is Manchester. And I swear... every hostel claims they're 5 minutes away from the Manchester United stadium. In Manchester, the location wasn't too important since we'll have a vehicle. But parking was. All the hostels were about the same price ($27) so it was pretty easy. I picked the one with the highest rating that had parking.

Our booking in Caernarfon, Wales was simple. They had 1 hostel. It got really good ratings. One guy even said he changed his whole vacation so he could spend more time at this place.

The Dublin hostel was pretty simple. I almost died when I found a hostel in the middle of Dublin for $22. Now I know this sounds confusing but we're actually spending 3 nights in Dublin. The 29th of June and then the 19-21 of July. So I booked the $22 hostel for the 2 nights we're there in July and went back today to book for June 29th. The hostel for June 29... $15 a person!

I know this is probably boring and no one wants to read about my hostel booking adventures but I was entertained by it all. Have a great Wednesday my friends!