First day in London

---

Hello everybody.

This is going to sound like a whinge, but it's not, it's just that everything that could have gone wrong went wrong spectacularly today!!! But it was actually fun, except for one bit, and if we hadn't already been awake for 20 hours we probably would have been laughing at it then, but we're laughing at it now so all's good.

Japan was nice, we had a great (yet bizzare) breakfast. They had two tables, one for Japanese guests and one for Western guests. It was truly strange, I wanted to try some of the japanese food, but when I eventually got to have a look, I realised that it was some of the weirdest stuff I had ever seen. If it hadn't been breakfast, I probably would have tried some, but it was just too hard to put that stuff in my mouth first thing in the morning. There were too many octopus tentacles sticking out of everything. So we just had a croissant and bacon and eggs, still somehow Japanese, but much easier to come at.

We caught the plane to London then, and got TVs which was nice, they don't have them on the flight from Brisbane to Tokyo.

If you've never been to Heathrow Airport, you probably can't imagine how busy it is, it's just insane. It seems like you have been walking forever before you get to where you show off your passport and all that gear. And when you finally do get there, it's the longest queue in the world. Took us 1 1/2 hours just to get to the counter. They have three lines. If you're in the EU you get through really quickly (about 5 minutes), then they have one for people on holidays with foreign passports, and then one for people with Visas. I couldn't believe how many people there were coming in with Visas, it's absolutely amazing how many people must be coming to live in England every day.

When we got out we read some directions on how to get to our accommodation, which were good, but still confusing because of how huge everything is. Finally made it to the underground and caught it to Acton Town where we had to change to another train (after some confusion), and eventually made it to some other place that I've forgotten the name of. This is where all the fun started. We needed to catch either two busses or one taxi to where we wanted to be. So we thought we'd save money and catch a bus. So we went to get some cash out, and even though Mr Commonwealth Bank (bless his black, cold little heart) promised me that my card would work overseas and there was nothing I would have to do, it didn't. So we thought maybe it was just that ATM, so we lugged our luggage around to every ATM we could find in the town we were in and nothing worked. So we decided just to catch a taxi and pay with Mastercard. Trundled back up to where the taxi rank was, asked the first taxi if he took Mastercard, he said any other day, yes, but not today because his printer wasn't working or something. So we walked to the next taxi. The driver didn't say anything to us, just pointed in another direction...not sure why, think he wasn't first in line or something, so we walked to the next taxi and asked if he took Mastercard and he said he didn't and his mate asked us where we were going and we told him and the guy said he had never heard of that place in his life. (so much for "the knowledge" hey?).

We gave up on that idea and decided to catch a bus. We eventually found a way of getting some cash and jumped on the bus. The bus driver put us off at the wrong stop, and we were so over it by then that we just decided we were going to guess where we were staying and walk in that general direction. Somehow that worked and we arrived!!! Yay!!!

The lady we're staying with is lovely, and it's in a good spot for getting into the city. We eventually got to bed at 11:30 (just after it went dark), all ready for another exciting day in London!!! Just need to sleep after being awake for over 24 hours on a pretty hectic day. But we should survive!

Hope everybody is well, talk to you all soon.

Bye bye.

---

Photos

Queue at Heathrow
Took us an hour and a half to get to show our passports here...not so good after you've been on a plane for 12 hours!!!