We made it!

After about 13 hours of traveling, Travis and I arrived in London today. We were supposed to leave Portland at 11:15 am, on April 9, but our flight was delayed about 30 minutes. Travis and I were stressing a little since we had to make a connecting flight in Chicago. Luckily when we landed in Chicago, they let those of us with less than 30 minutes to our flight deboard first. Then Travis and I lucked out and only had to go about 10 minutes through the airport to make our flight. For those of you who've gone through Chicago O'hare, you know that doesn't happen very often. We arrived in London at 8:00 am their time (which is 12 am on the west coast). Travis and I didn't sleep very well on the plane, despite my taking two extra strength sleeping pills. I think we each got about 2 hours of sleep. After going through customs, we figured out how to get on the underground and get to the neighborhood where our hotel was. We made one mistake though and didn't have a very good map, so we had to buy one and figure out where we were going. Since we had arrived so early, we couldn't check into our room, so we dropped off our luggage and decided to go see Buckingham Palace and watch the changing of the guard. Well... we found Buckingham Palace, we had gorgeous blue skies and sun, but they aren't changing the guard today. So... after about 25 minutes of standing around waiting, we found this out and decided to walk back to the hotel and get freshened up for the rest of the day.

Then we decided to take a self-guided walking tour of the Westminster area. We got on the tube and made it to Westminster Bridge. We got to see the London Eye up close (we're hoping for better weather before we go up, did I mention the blue skies went away and we had a dark, cloudy afternoon?) then we say Big Ben, the parliment building and took a tour of Westminster Abbey. By now it as about 3:30 pm and we hadn't eaten yet, so we decided we would head to find some food. Well... I made a little mistake and took us about 10 blocks in the wrong direction. Thankfully we bought a 3 day transit pass, so we were able to catch a bus and head to where we needed to go. We found some food and then decided to go check out the National Gallery. The one cool thing about London is most of their museums are free! So we spent about an hour there and decided it was time to head back and get some rest. We're not sure if we'll venture out again tonight, but we're already planning what we'll do tomorrow! Stay tuned...