How I Added a Dose of Luxury and Pleasure to my Crappy Trip

My memory of the celebrity hotel with the rooftop bar.

It’s not the combination of lodging and an itinerary that you would expect for your average trip. I was in London (again) and I was staying at a hostel. I liked the social aspects of being in a hostel but it definitely was not my first choice of accommodations. There were only 4 toilets in the washroom on my floor which only 2 worked really on a floor of over 100 people. Not forgetting to mention there was no privacy in the stuffy room of 12 women and one woman decided to come all the way from Taiwan to infect us in our dorm with her cold. (Honestly it was gross not only was she sick and not wearing a mask but she flat out wouldn’t cover her mouth when she hacked up a lung coughing). I was also 29 and the staff were treating me and other guests like high school students with these stupid made up rules about no talking outside in front of the building and no entering the smoking section unless you smoke.

Secondly, technically I was supposed to be studying. I was at a bartenders school which was a good school but how the hell am I supposed to memorize 6 cocktail recipes a day using milliliters instead of ounces all which learning alcohol history and flare bartending at the same time all within a week? In one of the best cities in the whole world. I wasn’t having it. My trip though my rules. Even if that meant failing the week long bartending class. If I sucked there I most likely would suck on the job too.

So I decided to cheer myself up. I was only a few blocks away from Leicester Square when I saw an Instagram post from Tom Felton (a favourite actor of mine) drinking a cocktail at a celebrity bar close by. Now, I didn’t mean to stalk him but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to potentially play it cool and meet him casually at a bar. I looked at menu prices (Which were wickedly expensive) and headed over to the hotel.

Now I didn’t actually see him there. I did however, befriend the staff at the hotel. It was only a few doors down from the movie Dune premier and a bunch of people who worked on the movie were staying at that hotel. In fact, there was a whole film festival going on that I didn’t know about. I somehow got talking to an older British couple at the next table over. I was telling them about the Amish and Mennonite people in Canada as I’m about 1/8 Mennonite by heritage. It just so happened they were doing a movie about the Amish in Pennsylvania. They gave me a festival magazine, wrote a link to a video they were pitching to Netflix and told me it was okay to tell people that I had met them.

Long story short, if you’re travelling and things suck you can sometimes make it better. Because ultimately your happiness is your own responsibility. You may have to face the consequences of your choices (like flunking the bartender class) but ultimately you have the power to have adventure if you have the guts to try things alone, change your situation if you can and break societal norms like only doing thrifty things because you are at aa hostel or only doing expensive things if you’re at a 5 star resort hotel.