It’s London baby!

20/12.2011 – Tuesday, day 1

After almost a 30 hour journey from Adelaide we have finally arrived at our destination, London! The flight itself from Adelaide to KL wasn’t  too bad, the four hour stop over though killed us. Thank goodness for free WiFi! We did a bit of a lap around the airport  and headed straight to Starbucks for some caffeine to keep us awake which worked but it was probably the most painful experience out of our whole journey. TRANSIT! I hate transit.. you’re neither here nor there… stuck in-between places.

Anyways, boarding our flight to Heathrow I was well prepared, no sooner that we took off and I had downed a sleeping tablet and was out like a light. I vaguely remember waking up to the air hostess serving dinner which I turned my nose up and passed out again! Brilliant! 10 hours out of a long 13 hour flight I was asleep for, woke up just in time for breakfast and then it was touch down.

So first things first, land in London, catch the tube to our hotel, get off at the wrong stop so head straight to Starbucks for free WiFi and more caffeine! We were about 2kms from our hotel and it was beautiful weather outside, if you call 6 degrees and clear blue skies beautiful, so we decided to walk.. got 1/3^rd of the way and gave up so jumped on a red double decker bus which dropped us off at our hotel door!

We checked in and decided not to sleep so we freshened up and headed straight out.  Caught more underground tubes than I could imagine possible in such a short period of time,  and walked pretty much the whole of London city. We walked around Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circuis, went passed the London Eye which had a line up of about 500 people so decided to bypass and went straight  into the Aquarium. Saw House of Parliament and Big Ben, had lunch at a classic English Pub and had my first English beer, then headed home for a bit of a nap. We thought it would be a good idea to see a show tonight to keep us awake, so we got tickets for STOMP the musical which was showing at 8:00pm… great show from what I can remember, my eyelids were that heavy I drifted off to sleep during the performance and woke up many times doing the old classic sleepy head nod! Needless to say as soon as that finished we headed straight home for some much needed R&R.

We are staying at the Ibis at Earls Court, a small room and pretty pricey WiFi but I’m all about the free breakfast and heading out to explore.

All in all it was a great first day in London, but I did lean some pretty valuable lessons about how this city works. 1:  Business hours are 8am -3:30pm which appears to be the only hours of daylight this city sees. 2: Whatever you do and at all costs, ALWAYS stand on the right of the escalator when heading up or down stairs at the tube station.. unless you want to get bowled over! 3. Don’t ever trust a ‘Pakky’ phone salesman coz he has one intention in mind and that’s to rip you off! Doesn’t matter what country you are in, they are always the same.

Goodnight beautiful world, until tomorrow….