Photo by Tim Street

Brompton, just down the street from our hotel, where the group ate lunch Saturday.

Saturday was an exciting day, but also one of the longest days I’ve ever had. Because of the time change, Friday and Saturday rolled into one long day, not giving us a chance to sleep, shower or brush our teeth in between. Our plane took off Friday evening, and when we arrived, it was Saturday morning in England (about 8 a.m.). A bus ride (about an hour) followed the plane ride.

We arrived at the Hotel Ibis in southwest London at around 11 a.m. Since we couldn’t check in yet, we stored our luggage and went to explore and find lunch. My group and I had a hard time finding a place that was open before noon, so to pass the time, we actually ended up in one of the most American places you could find — Starbucks. We sat in the Starbucks for about a half hour, and then we finally went to do something European.

To deal with the fatigue (since we were all pretty slaphappy) Colin Dugdale made up a song: It goes (sorry, I don’t know how to describe the tune): E-N, E-N-G, E-N-G-L-A-N-D, England (clap, clap), baby. We sang the song to cheer up our day when we were tired. A song for Normandy is now in the works.

After our lunch, we took a four-hour bus tour of the sites of London. We saw Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Tower of London. The only downside was how tired we were – by the time I got onto the bus I had been awake for 25 hours, so a lot of us had trouble staying awake during the stops. I’m glad we managed to fit all those in even if we were exhausted. I’d hate to say I’d gone to London and not seen Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and some of the other landmarks we saw.

London is a fun city. I’m a fan of the tube (we have a three-day pass) and I want to make sure I get on a double-decker bus before I leave. We noticed that nobody talks on their cell phones on the street (I haven’t seen a single person – maybe they don’t have the them?) and there’s no trash cans anywhere. A lot of are having problems with our phone cards, so if you were expecting to hear from us and haven’t, that’s probably why.

Needless to say, most of us called it a night early.
e-mail this page back to In the Footsteps

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.