The serendipity of travel

This next blog is testament to the non-chronological nature of my postings. The events described below happenened before many of the subsequent entries. Sorry. I never was much good at doing my homework on time.

It was a bit of a wrench to leave Philadeplhia. The hostel there is great, with friendly staff and we'd had great fun. But Washington DC, the nation's capital beckoned. So it was with excitement that I boarded the bus with Titus Auberon and Catherine Lennox. The weather was great as we headed for DC.

Titus and Catherine were staying with old friends, just the other side of the Potomac river. And after many days in the shared dorms of Youth Hostels, I felt like I could do with one night with my own bedroom. I borrowed Catherine's travel guide and selected an inexpensive guest house. And out of sheer laziness I took a cab towards the address for this place.

From the guidebook it seemed that this place was head and shoulders above the other establishments and there was a note to the effect that if you turned up at lunchtime they laid on a buffet. To follow the story from here, you need to know that I am A, a bit gormless and B, hopeless at directions and things of a spacial nature. Furthermore, whilst the taxi driver was very nice, I didn't think he was the best taxi driver that I had ever hired.

And thank goodness he wasn't.

He dropped me off on this street outside the 'guesthouse'. As I closed the boot of the taxi the route seemed obvious to me. There was an external set of stairs with an open front door at the top. What could be easier. But as I got to the top, some doubt crept in. Could this really be the guesthouse? As I walked up the stairs there was a surface with tourist brochures, and I thought that there might be a receptionist behind there.

By the time that I got to the top of the stairs I was committed. People were milling around a buffet lunch and sipping drinks. I walked into the lobby with all my luggage - a large rucksack, a laptop bag and a separate plastic bag - and said to a lady who was stood there, "Have you got a room for the night?". When she replied "Are you serious?", I knew that I had come to the wrong place. But before I had escaped - which was my immediate instinct - the assembled people had encouraged me to put my luggage down and had thrust a drink into my hand.

Best of all, before long I had been lined up with a sofa to stay on for the night. The party was great, I met lots of interesting and friendly people. I even met someone who worked was in a similar line of work, and we arranged to meet up for a coffee later in the week. I left the party with Joe Kingston, who's sofa had been kindly offered to me. It was a short walk through a sunny DC.

The day ended brilliantly. Instead of spending that evening in lonely guesthouse. I watched the superbowl with Joe and his housemates who had welcomed me with open arms. As I watched the American Office with one of Joe's housemates towards the end of the evening; it felt like I had lived there for ages.