WE MADE IT!

We got in to London today after the plane was delayed about 1/2 an hour. The flight was good even though we had a bumpy stretch about 2 hours before landing. The food wasn't that great however. Neither of the kids really liked the pasta and the chicken curry wasn't that great either. The good side was that you didn't have to pay for the drinks, whether is was pop, wine or hard liquor. There were a couple people that we noticed took advantage of that. We found our way through the various checkpoints and customs agents and found all of our bags.

One problem we did have was with the personal wifi device that I was going to use to hook up all our internet devices. They didn't have mine ready and it looks like I won't get it until Monday or Tuesday since they don't do anything on Sunday. So now I'm stuck either paying 16 pounds per day or trying to use the internet hotspot from Starbucks across the street.

We boarded the tube and headed towards our hotel. It was pretty easy to get there but at one point, Jill, Rylee and Jarret all had their eyes closed on the tube. Jarret even had some pretty serious head bobs. I was worried if I fell asleep too, who know where we would have ended up. When we got to our hotel, our room wasn't ready so we went to the lounge and had a light meal. Once our room was done, we headed up and a few of us took a little nap.

We finally had enough energy to venture out into the big city. We walked through along the edge of Green Park and got our first sight of Buckingham Palace. It's a really majestic building, especially with the ornate fences and memorial honoring Queen Victoria. I think the thing that's really impressed us is all of the old buildings you see.

Here is our first view of Buckingham Palace.

And the guard

The royal kids

One other thing that was really surprising was the number of buses that are everywhere. Below is picture from the street where they were just all lined up in traffic. By the way, I have no idea how they drive down here. Besides the wheel being on the wrong side of the car, people are going in lanes that I didn't think existed.

We ran across this odd shaped thing, we finally figured out what it was, do you have any ideas?

After we walked to Buckingham Palace, we headed off towards Picadilly Circus. It was very interesting to see the mixture of modern led signs with the old style of buildings. This place was packed with people going to different shows or restaurants. I think it would be really interesting to see it at night. We might just have to make a trip after dark, especially since it's not that far away.

This is one of the Olympic mascots that's right out in front of our hotel. So naturally we had to bribe Rylee and Jarret to strike a pose.

View of Green Park from our hotel window

Well, it's 9:03 PM London Time, which puts it at 1:03 PM Spokane time which means I've been up pretty much for 30 hours straight. I did get a few brief naps on the plane but not very much. Can't wait for a little sleep and to wake up tomorrow ready to tackle the day. I think we're going to go on one of the hop-on hop-off buses so that we can see as many sights as we can. One last note. We found a little grocery store right across the street from our hotel so our dinner was pre-done sandwiches, chips, water and some chocolate. Probably turned out to be the best meal of the day.