Technically, Google Maps Don't Lie

Quite a bit of adventures have taken place, and I swear it that I shall write all of them down for my adoring fans (hah).

Opening on an early morning in Lancaster, bus stop.  The day is November 19, 2011 and the air is cold and unforgiving.  Enter: Annie and Caitlin, two Americans with one simple goal: author-stalking.  No, EXTREME author-stalking.
Basically, Caitlin and I went to London for round II.  It's my brilliant idea to catch the bus early but we ended up waiting thirty minutes in the freezing morning air. 

Two and a half hours later, we step off the train and into LONDON, the greatest city in the world (next to Edinburgh).  Then, it's off to the home of one of stars of British Romanticism poetry: John Keats.

The house was very intriguing.  Keats' didn't have any surviving family members through most of his young life so whatever was left of his legacy remains in this quaint house.  Like copies of his death mask.  Gross.

Then, we decide to step it up to the biggest celebrity of the Romanticism period: JANE AUSTEN.  And hold on, because this story gets pretty wild.

THE SAGA OF LOCATING JANE AUSTEN'S HOUSE: PART I

Spirits high and still full from lunch at an adorable cafe in Keats' hometown, Caitlin and I set onward to find the Austen House, located in Winchester, London.  A thirty minute ride on the tube later, (with an immense amount of changes, thank you) we arrive in Winchester.  We walk around, searching high and low, pretty lost, trying to find Jane's house.  The map gets us back on track and leads us into a newly developed area.  Finally, we ask for directions.

Us: "Excuse me, can you tell us where Jane Austen's house is?"
Girl: clueless "Jane...Austen?"
Us: exchange of mortified glances
Girl: "There's a listing of all the houses over there, sorry I can't help"

Wait.  What?  We look around.  The freshly built apartment buildings have signs that read: Keats' house ("What?  We were just there!  These are apartments!"), Shelley's house, and other glorified writers of the Romanticism period, tacked up on cheesy signs against the white walls of the complex.
Oh, god.  We have directions to an apartment projects area!

Yes, the apartments that stood before us were probably built in 2008, rented out on the cheap, and named after famous writers.  Jane Austen's house in Winchester isn't her real house, in fact, the only thing that remains in Winchester of Jane's are the "supposed" area where she stayed when she was extremely ill and her final resting place.

Determined not to waste the rest of the day, we hit up the touristy landmarks.  I'm sure as you all have expected from a blog called "The England Traveler", here's Big Ben:

The London Eye at night

Then, we decided to go find the hostel because it gets depressingly black at 4-4:30 PM.  This is the next issue we run into: the Holland Park Hostel is IN the park, however, by the time we got there, the park was closed, thus we were wandering this new part of London for about an hour.

The creep-tastic street we had to walk on to get to the youth hostel

We FINALLY found it after hiking through the narrow park-streets for forever.  After dropping off all of our heavy bags, we got onto the tube and went to Queensway, which is were both of us had orientation.  It was strange to be back and to actually know where everything was.  Exhausted, we hit the hay early, with great intentions of actually finding Austen's REAL house the next day.

Stay tuned, there's PART II to come!

Cheers (for now)!