Aug 15 – Arrival in London England

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Hello from London. We are here! We are happy to report there was not a single mechanical hick-up with our flight (unlike Elizabeth’s adventure). Anyway, we are here in London.



The flight boarded and departed O’Hare on schedule last night. Our plane was pretty full but we didn’t have any problems with the seats or getting our carry-on luggage stowed – it was a fairly new American Airlines 777. However, anyone who thinks that jetting off to Europe sounds like a comfortable trip, well they probably are not thinking about flying Economy Class. We had two seats on the starboard side (one window and one aisle – as planned), but these seemed to be more narrow than in the past. The weather was pretty smooth much of the way, but somehow the pilot found bumps in the sky when we were eating or trying to sleep. We did get a dinner meal at 11:00 PM Chicago time (choice of ravioli or chicken & rice). Then again we had breakfast about 3:30 AM Chicago time (croissants and juice with a yogurt). So we didn’t actually have much “night” last night, and the “bumps” bounced your head around whenever you tried to dose off.



We landed just a few minutes late, but it wasn’t a problem. However, there was an extremely loooooong walk through the corridors to get to Customs and Immigration. We eventually completed the process, found our checked luggage, and were officially in the UK! This probably was sometime close to noon local time. We had been informed that there was a Barclays Bank ATM in the main terminal which would accept our Bank of America debit card – NOT there. So we converted most of the US cash we had brought into pounds and got a cab to our hotel. Except the cab fair was roughly twice the pounds we had been able to convert, so he took our pounds and almost all of our leftover Euros from before, for the rest of his fare (his currency conversion rates was really vicious). The cab ride came to more than 90 pounds, which was about twice what we had paid to get from the same area of London out to Heathrow 2 years ago. Anyway, we suspect that the cabbie really took us for a ride (literally and figuratively). That’s a sad way to begin our vacation – broke!



Anyway, we got checked into the hotel (seems quaint and maybe even a little bizarre) at the Garden View Hotel in South Kensington. To get to our room you take the elevator up two floors and then walk back down a half flight of stairs. We will describe the hotel in more detail the next couple of days. It is a couple of blocks from a main street, but actually located in a quiet residential area around a nice city park.



David later got directions from the desk clerk to find a Barclays Bank about 5 blocks from the hotel, so now we have Pounds again. Then he bought a couple of sandwiches and assorted other things for a light lunch – it was after 1:00 and it seemed like we should try to get on the local eating schedule. Not too surprisingly though, we are kind of tired today and our stomachs are really confused.



David has also been able to borrow a 3-prong English adaptor to plug in the charger for renewed PC battery power. The hotel has free WIFI (they have given us the password for logging on) so hopefully we will be able to provide updates each day on the blog detailing our future adventures while in London.



Today we had very loose plans for after we checked into the hotel, and those seem to have converted mostly to a long nap through the afternoon. This evening we went out and explored a little around the neighborhood, but we still didn’t go very far or do anything very tiring. We went over to the street around the bank and had dinner in a local pub. We shared a platter of fish & ships and shrimp & chips. The “Mushy Peas” weren’t very well received but everything else was delicious and just the right amount for the two of us. Janet had a sprite (here it is call Lemonade) and David had a real British ale – London’s Pride. Anyway, we really enjoyed the dinner. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a local store and got some bottled water to drink, a couple of bottles of wine for the cruise ship, and a few souvenirs.



Tomorrow we have a full day’s tour arranged, so we need to be completely rested and set for lots for “touristing activities”. We have left a wake-up call (probably would sleep until noon otherwise) for the morning and have arranged a taxi to take us to the tour start point. So that wraps up our report from London today.



One other item of news though is that today is Tessa Brink’s first day of Kindergarten. Patterson and Melody have been back with their teachers at daycare for the past week, but today Tessa got to officially kick off her long journey of education. We expect she was just as excited as her cousins were yesterday.

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