Recap of first day overseas!

Hey everyone!

A report for you. We started our adventure by leaving Coe and heading to the Cedar Rapids Airport. After checking our baggage in, we waited for our 1PM flight to Chicago. No problems. We got to Chicago, found our new terminal and figured out a way to occupy four hours of time before our 6 PM flight to Heathrow. It ended up not being a terrible layover, we got to know each other little better and I learned how to play the card game, Nerts (thanks Mike!).

From Chicago to Heathrow is an eight hour flight, with us ending up six hours ahead of Central time. Luckily, I was able to sleep for about three hours which made our first full day in London not too terrible. Upon arriving at Heathrow, we picked up our suitcases and found our way to the Underground line. It's very much like Paris' metro, so navigating it wasn't too hard. Traveling on the Piccadilly line, we got off at Earl's Court and walked a few blocks to our hotel. Although we could check in, we couldn't get into our rooms until 2 PM. And it was only eleven. So we dropped our suitcase off in the breakfast room of the hotel and started to explore.

Dr. Bob had given us Tube passes which covered all zone in London. Thursday and Friday will only be Zone 1, which still covers a ton of London streets. I paired off with Mike, Courtney, and Sam and we traveled with the philosophy of "Let's go where the Tube decides to take us." Which was really a good idea. We went to Baker's Street (the home street of Sherlock Holmes and from the classic movie The Great Mouse Detective), Wigmore Hall (a concert hall), All Souls Church, the London Eye (the big old ferris wheel that gives you bird's eye view of the city), Big Ben, and Westminster Abby.

It started to really rain around the end of our sightseeing, so we called it a day and headed back to the hotel. We ate dinner nearby, and I had fish and chips! Courtney and I decided a short, three hour nap was in order before journaling about the day and going to bed.