I got off the plane and got through customs and baggage claim fairly easily. Heathrow is a big place and it took much longer than I was expecting to actually get out of the airport.
Somehow I was able to transfer my US dollars into pounds and was able to buy a bottle of water and an Underground tube ticket to get to my hotel. The Underground was really easy to use, and very clean. It was really hot and stuffy during the ride, though. And, the Underground wasn't underground for more than half of my hour long trip into central London. But it was cool, because I was able to see some of the suburbs and stuff.
me in a phone box in London. hehe.
I got off at Russell Square and found the Royal National Hotel pretty easily. It's only about a block and a half away from the tube stop, and one of the people working at the tube was nice enough to point me in the right direction. I checked into the hotel and made my way up to the room, only to find that my roommate had not checked in yet. I was glad, though, because I was finally able to relax after traveling for the past 14 or so hours. I went down to the Contiki basement and checked my email and got my sleeping bag. When I went back up to the desk to get my room key (there was only one key for each room, so you had to leave it at the desk when you left) my roommate, Tracy, happened to be there, so we went up together and decided what to do with the rest of the day.
It turns out that she went to the same high school as my old roommate, Marla, and that she was a teacher (just like Marla - she also sort of looked like Marla, so it was really weird - what are the chances?). My original plan was to do one of those hop on hop off bus things so that I could see all of the sights, but I looked into it and I really didn't have enough time before my tour meeting at 7pm. So Tracy and I decided to go to the British Museum which was just a few blocks away (and also free!).
Tracy and me (actually, we're in Paris in this picture, because we didn't take one in London - our tours were in the same places for the first couple days)
The museum is actually pretty cool, although we were both too tired to fully appreciate it. It turns out that we went into a side entrance and missed a lot of the good stuff until we were on our way out. So it goes. But we did see lots of cool Egyptian artifacts; they had actual mummies and sarcophagi and lots of other things like that. They also had a really interesting exhibit on the history of clocks. Plus, they had the Rosetta Stone which was really cool to see. This was the thing that allowed archeologists to finally decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics and figure out what those funny symbols meant (it had the same message written in hieroglyphics and two other languages, as you can see below).
The Rosetta Stone.
After the museum, we headed back to the hotel and had some dinner at the London Pub. I had, of course, the fish and chips which was really good. I even tried it with malt vinegar like they have it here, and it wasn't too bad (although I think I prefer tartar sauce). While we were eating, we saw one of the tours come in and unload their bus. It was weird to think that we would be doing that in three weeks (or 6 weeks for Tracy - she was on a different tour).
At 7pm, I went over to my meeting and had my first look at my future friends. The first person I met was Valerie, who was also American. I remember seeing a lot of people at that meeting, but I didn't stay and talk to anyone else because I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. I figured we all had three weeks together, and I needed some rest. We had to get really really early the next morning, and a lot of people had the same idea I did.
next day...
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