Bump in the road... just one of those things when travelling

Hmm... well... possibly could be a lot more stressful if I let it be. Its 6pm and instead of taking the kids to the London Eye at night as promised, we are packed up in our little car and have no-where to stay tonight.. yet.

Housesitting is a great way to get around the country and live as 'normal' folk do. Sometimes the dates match up with the next sitting job, and sometimes there is a few days in between. With these floating days, we need to find accommodation, and thats when your budge goes out the window and you see your Aussie dollars get sucked away.

I have been using a site called AirBnB for about a year - its a community based accommodation style system, where people who own an extra flat - or have a grannie flat, or a few rooms in their home, will advertise and you basically book it like a hotel room or apartment. Its significantly cheaper and the beauty of it is, is that you get to live in a real persons home - not a hotel, and see how people live in that part of the world.

We booked a bedsit in North London - nothing special apart from it being close to a tube and apparently 'safe' streets ( important for my car)

We stayed one night.. and let me tell you - it looked tiny.. and the photos didn't tell you everything.. basically room for a bed.. and thats it.. far out.. It was good to show the kids that this is actually how some people live... in a room like this as their whole home.

That afternoon, the kids were confronted by a very angry Chinese lady who threatened to throw them in jail. Apparently, the person who rented us the room, didn't own it and was subletting it - which is illegal. The Chinese lady understood, after I calmed the farm a bit, that we had no idea about this, but she insisted we pack and leave immedialty.

We had little choice but to do so. The landlady assured us that we would get our money back ( which we did, thankfully)

So.. we went and bought some takeaway and sat at a local park to watch the gloaming over the city....and for me to start to search for somewhere for the next few days to stay..

Well.. at least we don't lead a boring life huh?