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Published: September 30th 2017
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Geo: 51.5002, -0.126236
We have made it to London and it looks like I thought it would look and the people sound like I thought they would sound and so far I love it! Yay! :-)
To backup a bit... that alarm dinging in St Louis at 3:30am was...well....too early! I drove us to the airport and we were actually on time and on the plane, buckled-in and ready for takeoff when the pilot says the left navigation system is not working. An engineer came onboard and a few minutes later our flight was cancelled. I used the Delta App on my iPhone to rebook us before we were even off the plane - that was genius if I do say so myself. By 9:30am, we were on a plane to Minneapolis rerouting us on to Washington D.C. -- which was our "first" destination in the beginning. Our international flight was scheduled on Iceland Air out of D.C. with a quick plane change in Iceland and then on to London Heathrow.
We had a nice leisurely breakfast/lunch/dinner in the D.C. airport around 6:00pm. It seemed like it had already been a very long day and we weren't even on our "long" flight
yet. Our Iceland Air flight to London left at 8:45pm. It was an overnight flight but only 5 hours 5 minutes long.
Iceland Air is impressive ~ Icelandic glacier water handed to you at boarding, adorable pillows and blankets with cute sayings about Iceland, great seatback entertainment playing a video of beautiful Iceland as you are waiting for everyone to board. If we weren't already scheduled to spend next week in Iceland, I would have wanted to visit based on that video alone. It really looks lovely! (I plan to say lovely a lot now that that I'm in Britain, by the way). So anyway, the plane was basically a sleeping plane and what put us to sleep?? The "Northern Lights" slowly moving across the tops of the luggage carts in the plane. It was beautiful. I tried to capture a picture of it but it was dark on the plane.
After a plane change in Iceland (it was still dark outside so we saw nothing), we boarded a flight full of British blokes and us. We flew to London Heathrow but the airport was so busy we had to circle for about 20 minutes before we were cleared to
land. Immigration was quick for us. We did notice we they pulled all the single people aside - even women - making them show hotel receipts, asking lots of specific questions, etc. We then waited about ten hours for our luggage....okay, it was only about an hour but really...an HOUR? Geez. We got our luggage and our driver was waiting with a sign with our name - sounds reasonable huh? ....like we have money and get driven around everywhere, eh? HA He had a silver Mercedes that he drove like a bat out of hell and we were at our hotel in Kensington in less than 30 minutes.
Our hotel is dreamy on the outside ~ I'll have to take a picture tomorrow. We are in the safest and nicest area of London you can live or stay ~ Lamborghinis seem to be at every corner.... Range Rovers, Mini Coopers everywhere, Audis, Bentleys, etc. but mostly Lamborghinis. We had dinner tonight in our hotel restaurant and met a cheerful Aussie couple about our age. They have been here since Sunday and the husband took a picture of one of the Lamborghinis and texted it to his boss and told him
he thinks he deserves a raise. We all got a good chuckle out of that.
We walked the neighborhood in the rain tonight. The temperature is about mid-40s - it's chilly but I like it! We stopped at a small convenience store where condoms were for sale that said things like "Stay Calm and Cum Inside" and "Big Ben Awaits" and other hilarious sayings. It is currently 3:15am and our alarm is set for 6:45am. Our room is unpacked, we have both showered and taken good long naps and tomorrow we start exploring the UK ~ we are traveling to Stonehenge and Bath. Let the London adventure begin!
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Paula
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How wonderful!!!