London-- Day 1

There is so much to cover about our trip that I've decided to break it down into days.  Wouldn't want to overwhelm you all, right?  I have about 700 pictures and it's so hard to decide which ones to share.  They may not mean much to you, but there is a memory for me associated with the ones that I've picked, so bear with me if you find them completely boring.

I'm going to give you all a little history for our trip.  We left DFW on the 18th at 12:10pm  and arrived in London on the 19th at 12:00pm. Now, it really wasn't that bad  because London is 6 hours ahead of our time zone.  So, we were only in the airport or on a plane for 18 hours. I'm sure many of you can relate to the traveling long distances.  And some of you might even be able to relate traveling long distances with someone sitting next to you that smells like stale coffee, very potent body odor, and cigarette smoke.  Gee, lucky us, huh?  Unfortunately, for me this part of our trip will never be forgotten because I cannot get the smell out of my nose!


We had three separate flights.  Yes, we're very frugal and took whatever tickets theThankyounetwork would give us.  We flew from DFW to Boston, from Boston to Iceland, and from Iceland to London.  The DFW to Boston leg was a breeze, but it was the Boston to Iceland that was the most difficult.  Or, at least the most smelly!  We arrived at Heathrow on time and took off walking following the signs to baggage claim.  45 minutes later of very brisk walking and not getting lost, we found the carousel that was taking our luggage on a joy ride.  That was one happy moment to find everything that we had parted with 21 hours prior!!  Ok, now was the hard part...we had to get from the airport to our hotel room, which was only one short hour away.  Since we all had very little or no sleep the night before (Every time I started to doze my neighbor would ask for Coffee in his thick Icelandic tongue, or I would be aroused because of a horrible stench only to open an eye and find one of his arms in the air).  Ok, back to our journey..I'm telling you that man STUNK! We followed the signs to the underground and found a very helpful chap who sold us tickets and told us where to catch the next subway toward our final destination.  It was a long walk with our luggage, and at this point I must acknowledge how well my girls did about hauling their heavy bags and not complaining...they were true champs!  I'm very certain that first day we burned 3x as many calories as we consumed.  Anyhow, we boarded the Piccadilly line and rode it just as we were told.  When we arrived we were greeted by a shuttle to the Hilton.  We were all starving by the time we made it to the hotel, which was around 3.  After settling into our room, we went to investigate where we could grab a bite to eat.  There were two pubs very close and we took out to find the one that we were told was open.  After arriving we found out that it was indeed open, but the chef wouldn't be cooking for another hour!  We trudged back to the hotel and drank some hot tea while we waited for the hour to pass. 






The Clipper was well worth the wait!  Brent and I both had fish and chips, which were out of this world and Blair had a huge bowl of soup that was incredible too.  Ashley, being the timid one, ordered a hamburger.  I suppose it was just to see if they made them any differently in London.

It is sad, but we almost fell asleep waiting for our dinner to arrive but perked up when our food arrived.  The waiter brought a basket of condiments: brown sauce, tarter sauce, salad cream, tomato sauce, malt vinegar(something familiar)and a few others, but I cannot remember.  We discovered that we loved the brown sauce, which is an English staple.  We left The Clipper and walked back to our hotel to change into our PJs.  We were in bed and asleep at 6:30.  Our children will never live down the fact that they begged to go to sleep so early!