Greetings from London!!

Friday at 3:20 p.m. my mom, grandma, and I anxiously boarded our British Airways flight direct from Los Angeles to Heathrow London. Our day had already started out rough, forgetting and misplacing important items and documents, how were we ever going to make it three weeks!! My mom and grandma had made a great choice in flights since we didn't have a lay-over in Chicago or Atlanta like we normally do. These lay-overs can extend travel times by days (well, it certainly feels like that). Not having a lay-over was definitely one of the better decisions to begin a trip and certainly easier to keep track of everything...and everyone!

I've always thought international plane companies to be sooo much nicer than American ones, and this certainly stands for British Airways. Their service, food, and aircraft were all up to par. Although I was envious of the first class passengers, I had enough room to sleep for an hour or two. On long flights, I would wholeheartedly recommend some sort of sweat or pajama pant, just to make curling up on a chair a little easier. I'd never tried that before and it did the trick.

Upon arriving in Heathrow around 9 a.m. this morning, we went through the airport with little trouble and little waiting. The public transportation in Europe is millions of lightyears ahead of our public transportation system (or lack of) in Los Angeles. There are two ways to get from Heathrow to London: the London Express and the London Connect. Can you guess which one is more expensive? The London Connect is about half the price as the London Express, although it is a bit longer. And that's in pounds...in dollars its probably 3 times more expensive. So you can guess which one my money-pinching mom choose, which ended up timing our arrival at our hotel perfectly.

Our hotel is not too far from Paddington Station, which makes pulling the luggage around a lot easier since we don't have to endure the busy Tube with three suitcases and three back packs. After getting settled, the beautiful day was impossible to resist. We dined at the Victoria, the pub down the street. To Americans, a pub might be a peculiar place to grab lunch or dinner, but to the British and the Irish, its an every day custom. Grandma and I ate fish and chips, while my mom, hoping to not upset her already queezy tummy, ate a delicious roast beef sandwich. We then walked off our pub grub at Kensington Park. Another custom foreign to Americans is the use of parks. Now, we have small playgrounds and grassy knolls where we may have an occasional picnic or football game with not too many people around. But Europeans, especially the British and the French from my experience, go to the park daily, if the weather allows. And on a beautiful day like this, naturally families, friends, and football teams (American and soccer) gathered for a nice day outside. Our mission impossible was finding the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. The receptionist at the hotel gave us the impression that it was on one side of the park, but of course it was no where close. After giving up four times, we found it! Now, this wasn't your typical fountain with a statue and spouting water; this was a circle, kind of like a river, where families and children could come splash and put their feet in it. In hindsight, this fountain embodied what the Princess of the People would have wanted to be remembered as.

Mom and Grandma were getting to the point of near exhaustion and wanted nothing more than to return to the hotel and sleep for an hour or two. I knew that if I got even the smallest taste of sleep, I wouldn't wake up. And that was exactly what I did when they failed to drag me out of bed. While they went to a London walk, I stayed in the hotel and slept. I woke up ten minutes prior to their arrival. Aparently, for the first time my mom failed to find a London Walk and they took a bus through the city instead. London Walks are great for an afternoon or night activity and you can find one to fit any interest. My personal favorite is their famous Jack the Ripper Walk departing from the Tower Hill tube station every night. While studying for his role as Jack the Ripper, Johnny Depp took the walk with the famous tour guide. If that doesn't tell you how good this walk is, then I don't know what does.

Well, that's it for the night. Even though I slept for most of the afternoon, I'm still exhausted and wouldn't mind more sleep. I'm sorry to say that I won't be watching the Laker game that is on in a few hours...