On Our First Day

Hello!

This is actually the morning of our second full day, but I fell asleep before I could post to the blog last night. We're still adjusting to the jet lag and should hopefully have it sorted out by tonight.

There are now a ton of pictures, far too many to post here on the blog, so make sure to look over at the slideshow. If you want to navigate through the pictures on your own, just click the link below.

http://s278.photobucket.com/albums/kk82/Cookingthings/europetrip/


Yesterday morning we walked around our hotel a bit, justs to get a flavor of London. Walking just down our street, however, we came across a house that Churchill once lived in. You can see a picture of it in the album. This is a good analogy of how the city of London is: covered in so much history that you end up walking into it without even looking for it.

But our first intentional thing we saw was Buckingham Palace, which is about a fifteen minute walk from our hotel. It was raining pretty hard yesterday, so the pictures are pretty gloomy. Thankfully, we had our raincoats!


Front gate of Buckingham Palace


One of the Queen's Guard. They usually wear red, but they seem to be wearing a winter coat.


Us at the Front Gate


Mrs. Ing Goes to Buckingham


I think this is the Royal Seal. Or it stands for Henrietta R. Hippo.

After our rainy exploit, we decided to head back to the hotel and buy a tour bus pass. We got a good deal that let us ride it for 48 hours. There are pictures from the tour bus, but many of them are through a window, and I'm hoping some of them will be better when we actually go there. There is this picture, though:


It's raining!...oh, wait, that's not that important part of the picture.

The tour took us through most of West London. We didn't really get off, except at Harrod's to go to the bathroom and take a peek around. There are a few pictures of Harrod's in the album. After a while, however, we got tired of riding the tour, and took the Underground back to our hotel.


Please mind the gap.

Megan stopped at a Casino, then we ate lunch. A horrible, horrible lunch. It seems that in the ten years since I've been here, the British haven't decided to invent any better food. I have never been depressed about eating a hamburger before, but I was! I was sad I had to eat it because it was so horrible!

We went back to the hotel and took an impromptu nap. I say impromptu because it was certainly not planned, and I could swear I was just going to rest my eyes...

After the nap, we headed over to Picadilly Circus, determined to eat something that was horrible.

 
Picadilly Circus, London's Time Square.


A famous English Telephone Booth in Picadilly Circus

We found an Italian restaurant and ate some spaghetti, much needed after our encounter with the odd hamburger. There's some pictures of the food, though I usually forgot to take the picture until after I started eating it...

After dinner we walked around Picadilly Circus, despite the rain, and found London's Chinatown.


One of the gates marking the entrance to Chinatown.

There are a ton of pictures of Chinatown, so you'll have to look through the album to see them all. I will share my favorite sign, though:




After Chinatown, we walked on Regent Street a bit, then headed back, exhausted. But not before we got some dessert.


Chocolate Muffin in the bag. Megan had a mint and chocolate McFlurry

That's all for now. We have to go to Westminster Abby now.

On Traveling Across the Pond

Well, we're here. It's 3:51 AM London time, and despite our best efforts I can't sleep any longer. So I thought I might as well post up what has happened thus far.

Us in LAX, still thinking that flying might possibly be fun.

The flight on Virgin Atlantic was niiiiice. Probably the nicest plane I've ever been in. It was spacious and clean and had about fifty movies you can choose from, along with TV shows, video games, and audio programming. We used the movies mostly, and never felt the need to pull down the ample supply of entertainment gear we brought along with us. Part of this was because we tried to sleep, but more on that in a second.

They gave us food, which was nice. In theory. Megan got the chicken and potatoes, which she liked. I chose vegetarian pasta. Those who know me will probably find this an odd choice, but I thought that a vegetarian pasta would consist of some penne with marinara sauce and some vegetables dropped on the top.

I did not expect a green-colored lasagna probably made of asparagus.
I wish I had taken a picture...

So, I ate the chocolate cake and continued on watching the movie. They gave me tea too, which was good. I've had tea three times since departing, twice on the plane and once here at the hotel, and it's so good. I mean, it's plain packaged tea, but somehow it's better here.

Anyway, I finished the movie and decided it was time to sleep. Prior to leaving, my brother recommended Tylenol's Simply Sleep, which is a pill that contains the ingredient in benadryl that makes you sleepy. In his words "Just take two, lean back, and feel really warrrrrm."

I did feel really warm. Too warm, in fact, and I had to take off my shoes and roll up my jeans. Megan decided to forgo her Xanax and tried to sleep on her own.

The next few hours are a bit sketchy on my end. Simply Sleep does make you mega-drowsy, but does not put you directly to sleep, and so I apparently did some odd things. Like shaking my leg while sleeping and telling Megan to not yell despite the fact she was whispering.

In any case, I did manage to semi-sleep for a while. In part thanks to the audio program on the plan "Meditate to Sleep." It's just this lady telling you how to relax your body mixed in with sounds of running water. Didn't actually put me to sleep, but I was too drowsy to change it. ;D

Closer to the end they gave us a bagel with egg and cheese for breakfast and we slowly descended into Heathrow. Emphasis on slowly, since it felt like we were taking a leisurely spin around England (the pilot even said the plane wold go as far north as Manchester).

The last time I came here, I flew in to Gattwick Airport. I remember this being a painful experience, including a depressing rat-maze like exit and a very, very long drive from the airport into London. This time, I decided we would go into the closer Heathrow airport, which as an Underground (the London subway) stop connected to the airport.

Heathrow, it turns out, is no less rat-maze like, but it's cleaner and brighter than the dank Gattwick. Still, there was quite a bit of walking involved, which was welcome after the long flight. Immigration was relatively painless, and both of our bags had arrived.

Another long walk through tunnels later, we arrived at the Underground station and got a ticket to Victoria station, which is London's main train and bus station, and is located just a few minutes walk away from our hotel.

Unfortunately, I slightly miscalculated how long it would take for the Underground to get us to Victoria. This is most easily evidenced by this picture of Megan on the Picadilly line.


"I'm smiling. But just barely."

It took us a while, though it was interesting to see the outskirts of London where the locals live. It was already dark, though, so most of the interesting bits were difficult to see. We changed trains once at South Kensington and evenutally go to Victoria Station. Apparently the Underground stations are not designed for people moving luggage, though. I think we went up and down four different flights of stairs?

We got to Victoria and managed to get to the hotel!


The Comfort Inn Buckingham Palace Road. Megan has some water we bought at a market.

We checked in and took some showers to wash airline-grime off. The room is nice and clean, but small. The bed is large enough for me, though, so no complaints.


The entirety of the room. The door on the left is the bathroom. The curtains open onto a small balcony overlooking the road.

After settling in, we went out to look for some food. And went to!...

...Subway.

Yeah, same Subway. Sandwiches and all. They have some odd sandwiches there, however, and a much smaller selection. Still, it's always good to find a backup food place where there's something familiar to fall back on.

After Subway we went back to Victoria Station to check out the shops and restaurants there. Again, more backup food (another Subway, McDonald's, KFC, a cool looking baked potato place) and a little market. We got some water there and headed back.

So that's about it! We crashed at 10PM, but we're pretty much awake at this point. We're just waiting for breakfast to open and watching British TV, in which they have a sign language interpreter in the corner, whom Megan like studying.

Updates later!

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A couple of housekeeping notes. You may notice the sidebar has some new features. The first is a slideshow, which will have every picture we take, regardless of quality, focus, and subject matter. It saves from me having to link every photo into the blog posts.

Second is the "Trafalgar Square Count." The last time I was here, we saw Trafalgar Square about a thousand times, each time the tour bus making sure we knew that the Lions around Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson's Statue were made of the Cannons from the French warships he defeated. So, for fun, I decided to try and count how many times we see Trafalgar Square this trip.

See you all later!

Chris and Megan.

Packing~!

Hey everyone!

Well, we're packing right now. That's it. Nothing else to say about that.

I just wanted to put a post here because it looked so empty and sad.

Good posts to follow!