Day One--London

Arianna and I arrived, bleary-eyed at London Heathrow this morning around 7:00 am. We made our way through the airport to the passport check. Two observations: first, LHR was not as impressive architecturally as I was expecting. The corridors looked closer to what RDU Terminal 1 than the new terminal two. My second observation is that Margie Hamberlain was correct, they had the heat turned WAY up in the terminal and in every shop we entered. Our hotel room is conversely, very chilly, even with the heat cracked to maximum.

We took the Heathrow express to Paddington Station and took a cab from there to our hotel. Side note: our cabby looked exactly like the cabby from "A Study in Pink" from the BBC Sherlock series. Same glasses, same Cockney accent, same age and race, same hair. I half expected him to hand me a bottle with two pills in it.  Thankfully, our cabbie was not a serial killer. In fact, he earned my eternal thanks for returning my backpack to the hotel.

We took showers and power naps and set off on our first London adventure around 2 pm. We bought sim cards for our phones. Arianna's worked in her phone, mine did  not. We ate steak and onion and cheese  sandwiches at Starbucks (which I am sure you cannot get in the States).  We went to Victoria station and scored our Travelcards and our two 4 one vouchers.  Then we headed off to ride the London Eye.  Afterwards we ate in a real pub.  Not the greatest meal  but I enjoyed the experience.

Tomorrow....the Tower of London and Les Mis