Landed in London

'Ello!

We have made it to London. Actually, we got in yesterday afternoon, but we dropped of our luggage and started exploring pronto. Hence, why I'm slightly delayed in posting.

We flew Virgin Atlantic out of LAX and I must say that Virgin America is a much improved version. Since I flew Virgin America on my return trip from New York in November, my expectations were much higher. Although, I do concede that it was a smaller plane that I took back then. The seats were much too close together, but they did have an extensive movie/tv/entertainment selection free of charge and along with 2 meals gave us free bags with socks, toothpaste, a toothbrush, pen and eyemask for the overnight flight. Very nifty.

Once arrived, we made our way to the Heathrow Express and then onto the Tube at Paddington station. When we got off at Russel Square to go to our hostel we promptly got lost and ended up wandering for a good half hour before we realized that had we gone the opposite direction when exiting the Tube station it was a quick two blocks up. Oh well.

After checking in we met our two German roommates and then headed out for some evening exploring. This took us to Buckingham Palace, which is HUGE and beautiful. Unfortunately we missed the changing of the guard, but are going to try to catch it when we return at the end of our trip. We did get to see it light up for the evening and it looks so very British. From there we walked down to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. They are both very lovely buildings and of course we took plenty of pictures. Then we got very lost looking for somewhere to go to the bathroom. Ended up at MacDonald's (very swanky).

From there our plan was to find a cool pub where we could rest and get a pint. After consulting the travel book Kaitlin gave me for Christmas (thanks Wifey!) we decided on The Court pub. Of course, we got lost. It was packed! Being foreigners, we hadn't realized it was a game night. So we ended up watching a football (translate: soccer) match between Manchester and Portugal. Manchester won, it was very exciting, especially when the whole place cheers together. Awesome! Since we were tired, we left after the match to go to the hostel. This time we made sure we had our bearings before heading off, but that didn't really make much of a difference anyway, since we still got lost. Apparently the street our hostel is on changes at the curvy part but our map didn't feel like telling us that. Good news was that we didn't get as lost as we had before. Good times!

This morning we woke up a bit late around 10am (that's 2 am for you in Cali) and headed out around 11. First stop was Waterloo Pier for the first leg of our Hop-on Hop-off River Cruise on the Thames. We got off at Greenwich and explored the University and Maritime Museum before trekking up to the Osbervatory which house the Prime Meridian Center. It was awesome sauce. We totally stood at the center of everything. Woot woot! The hike up there was hell though.

From there we hopped back on the cruise and hopped off at the Tower. It was funsies taking pictures and traipsing about. We missed the boat we intended to take back so we had to wait another half hour for the next one. It must've been fate because this one didn't have the pre-recorded guide telling you what was what. We just had a crew member with classic British dry humor pointing out the sights. I made sure to video it cause he was cracking us up. Unfortunately we were the only people who spoke English on the upper deck so he didn't get quite as many laughs as he deserved. After that we hopped back on the Tube (I'm fast becoming an expert) and are now back at the hostel. Tonight's agenda is to find some sort of mid-week nightlife in London if it kills us. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers!