Travel Update: Arrival in London

Before I even arrived in Brighton, Adam and I flew into London at about 7:00 A.M. on the morning of January the 2nd. After successfully passing through immigration, finding all our luggage intact, and an accidental meeting with the other student from UGA, it's no wonder that Adam had this crazed and somewhat confused smile on his face.

We managed to get on the right train to Victoria Station, which was luckily located about 5 minutes away from our hotel. Factoring in fact that we were each dragging 50 lbs of luggage down the city streets of London, however, made the time more like 20 mins. Once we got to the hotel, we discovered that our room was to be on the "third" floor (which in Britain means the fourth; the first floor is "ground floor" and the second is the "first," confusingly), so that meant a lot more dragging, except vertically this time. It was worth it, however, because our tiny attic room was really quite charming. That, and we could get out on the roof from the window! Don't worry, I took lots of pictures.

After resting in our room for a few hours, we decided to hit the town. Jet-lag was threatening to overtake both our consciousnesses, so on second thought maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go running around in front of London traffic. But we had both heard that one shouldn't sleep until nightfall if suffering jet-lag, so it seemed like the proper thing to do. That and we had to take sufficient pictures to satisfy our individual hungry family mobs.

Once out, we immediately got lost. Thankfully Sister-In-Law Meredith supplied me with a fairly discreet map (it comes inside a Moleskine!), so we were able to puzzle over it without seeming like complete tourists. We opted for the most famous, closest landmark: Buckingham Palace. It really was pretty neat to see it up close and in person.

We managed to catch a few other landmarks before we left, but the light was getting dark and we were eager to get into bed so we headed back. After some delirious conversation and a little British television, we both went to sleep around 9:00 PM. The next morning we split up at 8:00 AM, I toward Victoria Station and he toward the bus station. I haven't heard from him since... I really hope he made his bus!

(more photos of the landmarks and the room @ my flickr)