4th March, 1pm MST through 5th March, 10am GMT -OR- Where did all the time go?

Ok, so we've been here for 2 weeks now and I'm finally getting around to blogging about London. Woot! Aren't we all just so excited?! Well, be forewarned that this is a long post with a lot of words and not too many pictures. I won't be offended if you skip it, it's mostly a journal entry for Brent & me to remember the day we flew here.

Our plane left SLC at 1:30 and we got to Chicago around 5(?). We had 40 minutes to make our plane change which happened to be to a completely different terminal. Yikes! Luckily, the bus to catch to get to the other concourse was only 5 or 6 gates down from ours and it dropped us off 2 gates from where we needed to be. We got there after general boarding was done but in time to sit there for 5-10 minutes and get settled before they closed the doors. It was perfect. It was the biggest plane I've ever been on. It was cool. I just wish we could have convinced Zurich to pay for premier class, or at least business class.

The flight was long, but not as long as we had expected. It was 7.5 hours and with all the time changes we were set to arrive at Heathrow a little before 8am. The goal was to relax, watch a movie, eat some dinner and then sleep for as many hours as we could (I was hoping for at least 4). Ha! The best laid plans...etc. About 2.5 hours into the flight, after eating dinner and watching The Day The Earth Stood Still (pretty good, btw) I decided I'd like to try to sleep so I took out my contacts, changed the movie channel to a classical radio channel and laid back. Brent eventually tried laying down a bit too. After 30-45 minutes of not even coming close to falling asleep, we gave up and looked for another movie. That's pretty much how the rest of the flight went. An hour or 2 of tv/movies/reading/staring into space, then 30-45 minutes of trying to fall asleep. Brent slept for about 20 minutes until it was time for breakfast to be served. Ugh! So, no sleep. 7.5 hours in a coach seat with the people in front of us reclined completely back. And WAY to much excitement to get here. It was fun. Well, parts of it were.

Flying over the English countryside was beautiful. I just wish I would have snuck my camera out to take some pictures, even though they had already asked for all electronics to be turned off. It was like a picture book. Big open fields lined with trees. Little country roads lined with trees with little European cars driving on them. Some big, old churches and cottages all lined with trees. Gorgeous! Flying over the city, it got cloudy so we couldn't see much but we did catch a glimpse of some palace. My best guess is Windsor Castle.

So then we were here! Ahh! So exciting! We totally forgot how tired, and dry eyed and sick we were. For a few minutes anyway.

The line to get through immigration wasn't too bad, it only took like 10 minutes. I would have taken pictures to document all of this but it strictly said no cameras until we cleared customs. Darn! As we were waiting in line for our turn with the Border Authority I was reminded of this movie. We heard the other people in line in front of us being asked all sorts of questions so we were getting all geared up for our turn. No questions. Well, just one or 2. "Are you traveling together?" and "May I see your work permit please?". I guess when you already have visas that say you're going to be here for 2 years and the proper documentation to back it up, they don't have any other questions. They guy just looked at our passports, then us, then our visas, then us again, then stamped a few things, wrote some stuff down on our landing cards and then we were done.

We got our luggage easily, I guess it had been spinning around on the thing long enough that the attendants took it off. We grabbed 2 trolleys (they are free here!) and headed over to the toilets. They aren't "bathrooms" here, they are toilets, which I think sounds worse, but whatever. The pictures on the toilet signs crack me up. The girl has a poofy skirt! Awesome! I probably shouldn't have looked in the mirrors in the bathroom because, well, yikes. I looked like I'd been awake for almost 24 hours and was sick. Oh well.

After the luggage, we thought we were done but to exit the airport, you still have to go through customs. Huh. We thought that was the first thingy where they stamped our passports. Good thing they aren't too strict on the cameras thing because I took some pictures with our luggage. So we head over to the "area" and there are 2 lines, one that was labeled "Nothing to Declare" and the other "Declarations". There were no attendants, no security, nothing. So we went in the nothing to declare exit. No harm no foul, right? I don't think we had anything to declare. We just had a bunch of clothes, some paperwork, our cameras and some snack foods and things to do on the plane.

We headed over to the taxi line and got our cab. It was so cute! All the taxis here are old timey looking cars. I think it's the same concept as all the cabs in the states being yellow. It's for show. Anyway, the driver loaded up our things and off we went. The driver had the most perfect accent. It was awesome. He was very nice and made a point to ask questions and answered some of ours and he pointed out landmarks. At one point, he called the Duke of Wellington a "bloke". I don't know the major roads around here yet but I'm thinking he may have taken the specific one we did because we passed the major museums, Buckingham Palace, St. James Palace, and all kinds of other things. It was our own personal little tour. I didn't take any pictures of things though because the windows were fogged up and we'll go on proper sightseeing tours later.

It was so crazy to be on the wrong side of the road, especially on the freeway (or motorway, I should say) having all the cars zipping past on the right side. Weird. Not to mention the whole driving on the wrong side of the car. I guess it is the right side to them. Ha! Get it? Right side? Yeah, anyway, it's going to take some getting used to. We're still working on which direction to look before crossing the road. Obviously, the "look both ways" things still applies but you really need to know which way the oncoming cars are headed. Brent saw a guy almost get hit by a bus the other day.

It took about an hour to get to our apartment because it was rush hour driving into the city. The taxi cost us £70! We knew it would be at least that much though so it didn't matter. And it is being reimbursed by Brent's office. We could have taken the tube or a bus or something but we were so tired and had NO idea of where to even start and we had tons of luggage so a taxi was just easier. And fun! It was the first time I've ever been in a taxi.

Anyway, we got to our apartment, The Marlin Apartments, at 30 Queen Street but our room wasn't ready yet since check-in is 3pm and it was about 10am at this point. The concierge said it would be ready around noon so we dropped our luggage off in the closet and headed out for a walk. I'll pick up there on the next post. I just need to get this one up before Brent needs the computer for studying because if I don't it'll be a couple more days.