Our journey begins!
Today was a great, although tiring first day. We arrived in London around 11:00. After a brief tour through the wonderful world of customs (ugh) we started on our journey. The first casualty of the trip
were my 5.5 year old pair of headphones. I left them on the plane, and by
the time we informed security, someone had already stolen them. I of course, have been reminded of this every 5 minutes. We had to wait about 45 minutes for the bus driver to arrive at the airport and pick us up. We then went on a bus tour of the city. At one point or another, almost all of us fell asleep on the bus.
We stopped at a few places to walk around. One of these places was Buckingham Palace. Our guide gave us a brief overview of the palace, as well as the history of the current queen and her family. We couldn't go inside, but we did get to see the gates and the guards outside.
About 15 minutes after that, we went to the roof of a new building. From there we saw a view of over half of London! The view was incredible! This is one of the buildings we could see from the rooftop. Its called The Shard. Many people ask why its not finished, but that's the way the buildings meant to look. It's meant to resemble a glass shard, hence the name.
One of our final stops before dinner ( By the way, I feel like this should be mentioned. We didn't have any lunch when we arrived, so we went over 17 hours between full meals; airline dinner doesn't really count as a meal.) was the London Bridge and the HMS Belfast, a cruiser that shelled the beaches before the Normandy invasion. This is the first real part of WWII we have seen.
Hope everyone back in America had as good of a time as we did, and hopefully you got more sleep then we did. If I seem incoherent, its because I couldn't sleep on the plane and have been awake for 37+ hours, so I apologize for the randomness. For tomorrow I will try to make a better organized post, as well as use my idea for sharing pictures. Talk to you all tomorrow!
Thanks for the updates. Even with no sleep it's great. Have fun!
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Michele....it's great. Thank you for updating us. I hope everyone gets lots of rest tonight. Have a great time!
ReplyDeleteWe really enjoyed reading your post and seeing the pictures. Hope everyone gets rested and you have more wonderful adventures tomorrow! Mr. B's parents.
ReplyDeleteYes thanks so much for the updates and pics....Hope you all got some sleep last night and continue to have a great time~
ReplyDeleteWe all got plenty of much needed sleep last night! I am not sure I have ever seen a more tired looking bunch than the group as we arrived at the hotel after a wonderful, much needed dinner! No problems with anyone sleeping last night! We were all up, through the breakfast buffet, checked out of our rooms by 9 am and ready to continue our tour of London's museums today! The kids have all been very attentive and we'll behaved. They have all done a great job of staying together, which is not easy in a city of over 11 million people! Our guide, Peter and his London helper, Chris, have been great assets coordinating our movements from point to point throughout the city... especially on the "tubes", London's subway system. Alan is trying to have each person give him their best photo(s) from the day for blog posting. Obviously there were some tired puppies last night, who went straight to bed. Hopefully there will be WiFi on the ferry tonight so Alan can get many more photos posted tonight. Beautiful weather (no rain and temps in the mid to high 60's) so far. It should be a little warmer the next few days. Kudos to Alan for setting up the blog and staying awake long enough to update everyone last night! Au revoir for now (practicing my French.)
ReplyDeleteJ.E. Kirkpatrick
Took me awhile to pull it up on the computer. Sounds like you are all having a wonderful time! Hope nobody gets seasick on the ferry ride tonight. Have lots of fun and lots of good food!!! Love you, Grams
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