First Stop - London

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How many Canadians can you fit in a phone booth?

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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

London, England

We’ve’walked ‘til we’ve dropped’ for two days in London now. It hardly seems possible that we are here, but here we are! After our first day I asked David, Karsten and Stephanie what words would describe their first impressions of London. The responses:

David: “allergies!” It’s been very windy and all of us are suffering some from hayfever, and Karsten is downright miserable! Jetlag plus a dose of Benadryl put him right to sleep for most of the bus and boat tour yesterday. Poor guy!

Stephanie: “old buildings” She’s right. The buildings are VERY old. It really blows you away to see so many historic landmarks so close together.

Karsten: “lots of traffic” The traffic is mostly made up of buses and taxis; neat old-timer taxis! It’s a little hard to get used to them driving on the wrong side of the street and sitting in the wrong side of the car to be a driver. Fortunately, at each cross walk, there is a sign painted on the pavement to either ‘look left’ or ‘look right’, depending on which side the traffic would be approaching you from.

Karsten & Steff at Big Ben

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My first impressions of London would definitely involve the history, the amazing old buildings (Westminster Abbey is incredible – beyond imagination!), and a sense of cleanliness and safeness that I did not expect. What I also love is the wonderful English accent that you hear everywhere (what a surprise, eh?). Children, adults, asian, middle eastern, white, it doesn’t matter, the accent is great!

Sites we’ve seen so far include the National Gallery, the British Museum, St. Martins-in-the-Fields church, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the amazing legislature buildings, the London Eye (admired the technology but didn’t go on it yet), and Buckingham Palace. We’ve taken the buses and the Underground but mostly walked and walked and walked. The beds in our teeny, tiny room could be as hard as rock and we would still sleep well. We haven’t spied a bed bug yet and the room is clean. Our basic needs are being met, so we won’t complain that we have to walk up 4 sets of stairs to get to our room, or that the bathroom down the hall only has cold water. We are blessed to have this great opportunity!