3.28.08 (Friday) _ London

The cat that liked Jon. We still love Mr. Furry the most though : )
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Friday, March 28^th

Last night at 8:55pm we confirmed our flight online and reserved our seats near a window. When we woke up on Friday morning there was some bad news about the airport we were flying into, Heathrow International – London. Apparently, Thursday they opened up a new terminal. The really bad part was that CNN was reporting online that a third of the flights into the new terminal were being cancelled and those taking off 80% were delayed. As luck would have it, we were flying into the new terminal (#5). Luckily, Jon had checked the status of our flight when he read the latest article on CNN. He found out that our flight had been cancelled – so after a call to British Airways we were booked on a flight scheduled to leave 2 hours earlier than our cancelled flight. Even though Jon had to get off work earlier than anticipated, it worked out nice leaving at 6:55 rather than 8:55pm.

Outside of the Easy Hotel in Earl's Court.
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However, since our flight was moved up two hours, we were left with less time to prepare for the trip. I biked to several grocery stores in search of some last minute snack items as well as trying to get cash back from the grocery store. Thursday I got cash back from a grocery store which was really nice. But, today I had no such luck. The place where I got cash back yesterday told me that since my card wasn’t a Swedish card I couldn’t use it even though it has worked before. After being rejected at all three grocery stores, I headed down to the train station to purchase tickets to the airport via the train. (they have machines where you can buy tickets at outside near the track – but our cards do not work on the machines)

Sign telling pedestrians which way to look on all corners in London.
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Around 2:30pm Jon came home from work and we finished packing our two backpacks and we were off! On our walk to the train station a stray cat got up from his nap and walked over to Jon (without him doing anything) to lie on his foot! It was so cute – but definitely not as cute as Mr. Furry!

After a twenty minute train ride, we arrived to the airport. We were dropped off in terminal 4 by the train, so we needed to walk to terminal 2 in order to check in. Some of the hallways were quite interesting that we walked through. One had various colored transparent strips running down the window in long stripes. With the sunlight hitting the transparencies it made the hallways in one shades of pink and yellow with sounds of the tropics. In the next hallway, the transparencies made the hallway fill with shades of blues, purples, and greens. The sound that played in this one was futuristic.

Hallway entrance to our room at the Easy Hotel
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When we arrived at the terminal we were surprised to not see anyone at the ticketing counter. We had about 2 hours before our flight, so we walked around a bit to kill some time. About half hour later, we were able check-in and go through security. Once past security, we weren’t able to go to our gate until 30 min. prior to our flight due to the fact we needed to go through immigration first. Our flight ended up being delayed once we got through immigration for 20 min. but at least not cancelled!

walk-way into the room. The closed orange door ahead is to the bathroom
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When we were finally able to board the plane, we took our seats and waited for take off. The flight was very nice, they served sandwiches and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks tea, pop or coffee. The only part of the trip that I’d rather not remember was the landing! When we were landing in London, the wind was very strong. The plane was swaying back and forth even as we hit the ground. Both Jon and I were glad when the plan stopped and we were level with the ground and only hearing the wind whisking by us through the window. We were now faced to get through the new Terminal #5 to get to the subway. The terminal looks very industrial and modern on the inside. However, everything is so far spaced out and at points you have to take a slow moving escalator down only to take another slow escalator up! Soon enough though, we were on the tube (subway) heading to Earl’s Court, London.

Inside the bathrrom - similar to a motorhome.
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When we got off the tube we walked down a street populated with café’s, restaurants, grocery stores, and shops. We decided we should find our hotel and get checked in before we did more exploring since it was about 10pm. When crossing the street we noticed at every crossing they have painted in the street “Look Left” or “Look Right” because the traffic comes from the opposite direction of the rest of the world! We are still surprised the Britain is the only (?) place in Europe where they drive on the left side of the road. We walked for about 5 – 10 min. to get to the hotel from the tube (this is what it is called in London – but it is essentially a subway). The hotel we stayed at was the Easy Hotel. They provide hotel rooms for a low rate. The rate is low because they give you a small room w/ no window – if you want to pay more you can get a room with a window. Also, you have to pay to have your room cleaned and for extra towels or a remote to the T.V. Neither of the above would be an issue for us since we just needed the room to sleep and shower. The room was actually bigger than we had guessed it would be – complete with a bright orange wall!

Inside the bathroom - to flush the toilet you push the big button just above it down. To stop it you push the button back up.
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After dropping off our bags, we decided to go back towards the tube to check out the grocery store to see what kind of snacks/meals they had available if we ever decided we needed more food. After a quick look around we were off to the local pub! The drinking age in London is 18 and on several occasions we saw people drinking in the street (there are signs in some areas where people ‘may be asked to not drink by police’ – some people were even drinking on the tube!). When we were ordering the bartenders couldn’t understand us! We could understand them, but for some reason our accent threw them off hehehe. A little bummed we took our drinks (supposedly Jon’s was a bitter beer…we think) and sat down upstairs. It was different to look around and see younger people drinking and playing clue or guess who board games. Once we were done with our drinks we retired back to the hotel to make sure we were rested for our first day of sight-seeing in London!