Lemonade

First, I’m going to “course-correct” with this post. There is much more to say about where we have already been, but to the savvy reader, you already know in September we are in Edinburgh. I plan on posting about highlights looking back, but what happened to us in Edinburgh upon arrival is too good not to post about and catch up on.

When we book AirBnb rentals, we diligently look for high speed wifi info, search reviews for that, or directly contact the owner. We did the latter for the flat we booked in Edinburgh and were told remote working for both of us would be no problem. We arrived, were met by the owners who were nice enough but already flagged the fact that if we had any problems with the connection to let them know and they’d easily and quickly upgrade. Red Flag. Why hadn’t they confirmed this per the way the flat is advertised and knowing who was renting for a month.

I will say that the flat was small but clean and tidy and cute. Perfectly adequate for our stay. We thought the couple was nice and even had a Lithuanian connection. We went out for lunch, did a small shop at a grocery nearby, and headed back to login and start our work day. This was after waking at 5:30 a.m. in Oslo to take trains and planes to get us here. Then the bottom fell out. The punchline of this joke is sad as well as funny – the speed test we ran was showing 8 Mbps download and 0.3 mbps upload. I looked it up and the average global speeds are 60 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up. All afternoon we attempted in vain to stay connected, with the connection dropping, being slow, and not being consistent.

I won’t go into too much more detail but it got a little ugly with the owners. Nothing like being called liars on your first day in Edinburgh. All we got was an offer to try and make it better in a few days; that means days we would be unable to work. Reliable, fast internet is that important to us. We went through the rest of the day with all options on the table – co-working space, hotel with business center, another rental, or just bailing and flying home early. Add into the mix that I signed up for a tapestry workshop this weekend and a short 3-hour embroidery class next weekend. Both of which were non-refundable. Silly me, planning ahead.

For a variety of reasons, none of the possible options were good. At this late date, any long term rental in Edinburgh was 2x to 3x what we paid for our place, unless we wanted to rent a room and stay with Robbie. (inside joke) We started considering leaving Edinburgh and renting something on the train line down to London, our ultimate departure point for home. We are staying in London for two nights to see family before we leave, but can’t afford anything else. London is pricey.

Even between Edinburgh and London, nothing looked compelling or was a good price. We are relying on public transportation and do not want to rent a car – that other side of the road thing, don’t ya know. Plus, throwing a dart and picking some place to land for a month was daunting. We’d done our research when we picked Edinburgh. Finding a great rental in a cute town with amenities we like (museums, good food, hiking and nature options) felt a big challenge in an hour.

On a whim, we decided to check the pet sitting site that we recently joined. Many of you know we lost Mia last November after almost 17 years. We signed up in June while in Portugal. The site matches up people that need a pet and house sitter with people that want to do that and are flexible to be wherever, whenever. We applied for and were accepted for two pet and house sitting jobs in the States coming up in December to February. Anyway, we knew that there are folks in Europe needing help on the site – so we looked. And wouldn’t you know, Trevor luck. We found a gentleman in a bind needing to travel for two weeks beginning September 2nd. He is just outside of Edinburgh and reachable by train. We applied and were accepted in about an hour.

That bought us a bit more time and we are looking forward to taking care of his dog and birds. It also meant I could attend my workshops and we’d get the chance to see what life is like in the suburbs, kind of like our other road trips. The problem remained, what to do about the next few days until the weekend. Given the lack of priority the owners seemed to be putting on this, we needed an alternative. We also had contacted AirBNB at this point about options and their recommendation was to find an alternative and vacate asap.

We found an option about 15 minutes away, still near old town Edinburgh and I can still walk to my workshop Saturday morning. There will be a bit of juggling Saturday to get out of this place and go our separate ways. I’m about to get very proficient at the bus system since I’ll be riding to finish up the workshops. That also means, no matter what we decide to do after September 16th, we have a few days to visit some key sites here in Edinburgh. So, I’d say we were able to make some great Lemonade from some unexpected lemons. Stay tuned.