London England (brrrr)

Well yesterday we safely arrived in London. We made our way to the airport in the morning for a flight that was leaving Frankfurt at about 2:30. Our flight was uneventful, until we landed. It seems the doors on the walkway thing they move around outside would not open so we had to get out of the plane using rolling stairs. It was fun. Customs was easy and eventually we figured out where to go to get the trains.

I managed to figure out that where we had originally been told to go for our hotel (all we had was an address) was wrong before we made it onto the trains and I thought I had it figured out how to get there. Unfortunately my map only went down so far, but I was counting on the hotel being in a certain place.

The subway ride to the Waterloo station took quite a while, but the airport is quite a ways away from the city centre. I managed to get a fix of our position on the map and we headed off. Well after 45 minutes of walking with our heavy packs as well as a knapsack each we finally found the hotel. It seems Albert Embankment went a little further than I thought and we had to walk quite a ways. By the time we arrived we were both quite cold and tired and probably looked a bit rough.

As it was quite late by the time we finally made it all we managed to do last night was eat some supper at the restaurant downstairs and then try to watch a movie on television. We had rented "Over the Hedge" a Disney movie of sorts for only 1 pound, but Amanda fell asleep 20 minutes into it so I turned it off and we went to bed.

One note on the hotel. It is a really fancy hotel that Amanda tells me costs 300pounds/night (on a sign downstairs) but we got it for a really great deal apparently and it is quite nice although I would never pay 300pounds a night for a room like this.

We woke up this morning, had breakfast and headed out. We spent most of our day wandering around and somehow made it to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and a bunch of other place. I got to stand beside a royal guard (not the black hatted ones) and Amanda took a photo of us having a contest to see who could look more solemn.

We also found tickets today for Wicked the musical from a half-priced place. We paid full price but got cheaper tickets and were lucky we found some as there seemed to be none anywhere else. We plan on riding the London eye tonight as well as going to see the show.

London has been great so-far and it has certainly been easier with everything in english. We are having a great time and are looking forward to the rest of the trip as this is really only the beginning.