Welcome to London!!

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Wow. Welcome to London, indeed!

We landed in Heathrow around noon, picked up our Oyster cards and packed all of our luggage to the tube station for the final stretch of our journey home. Of course, saying it like this makes it sound so simple... but we had a lot of luggage! So, it wasn't that simple at all! We loaded all of our stuff onto the Picadilly Line train, and sat down for the hour or so journey into town. The train slowly filled up, and by the time we got into London proper, the train was so packed that there was no way we could get our stuff off the train! We were very worried that we wouldn't be able to get our bags through the crowd, but luckily, by the time we got to our stop, things had calmed down a little bit.

The first thing Elysia noticed when she got out of the tube station was a couple of signs. In all respects these were completely normal signs. Unfortunately, the text on them raised a bit of an alarm for her (Mike was oblivious to the signs altogether... of course!). The signs were pointing the path to the prisons. Yes, prisonS. (Or, two different routes to the same prison). Suffice to say we grabbed our bags and high tailed it in the direction we thought would take us to our new home... luckily, it did.... eventually. It took about 15 or 20 minutes to drag our bags to the new flat. Luckily, we only had one casualty along the way. Unluckily, it was one of the wheels on the biggest, heaviest wheely-bag we had!

When we got there, however, no one was home. Lele (short for Emanuele) was at work. Martina (or Nanda... as she is usually called) was at the bank... so, we waited outside and admired our building.

Then, it began to rain. (Afterall, this is London!)

Our building has a small ledge that we could hide all of our stuff under. We waited the twenty or so minutes until Nanda came home, and then we went up!

Being Italian, Lele and Nanda are extremely good hosts. It's in their blood! So, when we arrived they insisted that they cook dinner that night because we must be tired from our journey. For dinner, pasta of course! Followed by a delicious spinach and ricotta quiche.

So, the first day in London was a good one. We got settled into our new flat, met our amazing new roommates and had a great dinner... if only now our flat had some furniture! (Well it does have some... beds and a kitchen table, but no sofa... and no where to put our clothes, yet.)

Tomorrow, we will explore London!

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Photos

Mike and the Bags
In Heathrow Airport, on the way to the tube station!

Comments

[mom]

Wow, quite the adventure. I would like to meet your roommates. Invite them to BC.