Day 1 - Sep 1, 2009 Last updated: 10/2/09 8:00pm PT
The day began on Aug. 31st. We had a 6:50pm flight, which was delayed by an hour. We used Shuttle Express to get to the airport instead of paying for 3 weeks of parking. We could not adjust our prearranged pick up time. There was no traffic and the airport was empty. There was no line at airport security so we had about 4 hours to kill at the airport. We landed in London about 1pm on Sept. 1st. It’s a 9 hour flight and London is 8 hours ahead of Pacific time, so in our minds it was 5am. We dove right in and did some walking around the city. This helped with the jet lag. As I mentioned in the blog, we had really cramped seats. My knees were in the seatback in front of me and I could barely move. Gave me thoughts of springing for a seat upgrade on the ride home, but we ended up getting bulkhead seats home, which was much better.
During the trip, we saw plenty of people struggling with multiple, large pieces of luggage. I even helped a couple of people carry their bags up stairs. Fools, all of them. This is the way to travel. In fact, my bag was too heavy, so I immediately ate half of the M&M’s that I brought.
I have added some interactive Google maps showing mostly the hotel locations. Feel free to zoom around to get a bigger picture of where we were.
All these sights were within walking distance of our hotel.
Here’s a view of the street from right outside the hotel’s door. It was a very nice area of London.
The London cabs, on the wrong side of the road.
I was a bit surprised that you had to pay to use the toilet in the Victoria train station, but as we went along on the trip, most train stations required payment.
Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen. I don’t know where she was, but she wasn’t here or at Windsor Castle.
Westminster Abbey. There’s been an Abbey here since about 1050, not sure how much is original. The two big towers (right side of second picture) were built in the 1700’s.
Big Ben is the bell in the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster. It was installed in 1859.
The London Eye (aka Millennium Wheel) is the largest ferris wheel in Europe. Built in 1999, each capsule holds 25 people and takes about 30 minutes to go around once. Looks like the one at the top fell off! We did not go for a ride.
Hello. Anyone home?
