London

For those of you we haven't emailed yet... WE'RE SAFE! We made it to London just fine. Our stop over in Iceland was short but sweet... and cold! The Reykjavik airport was beautiful.. very modern, sleek and CLEAN!

We arrived at Heathrow and thanks to Em's exceptional navigation skills we hopped on the Tube and headed for the city center. We got off at Westminster Station and as we exited we were in complete awe of what stood before us: Big Ben, Parliment and Westminster Bridge... our journey was suddenly REAL! I think we all stood there a little dumbfounded for a few minutes. And then, we got lost.

Total travel time between train arrival and checking in at the Walrus Waterloo Hostel: umm.. about 1 hour... total distance: 1 block. A seemingly nice 'chap' smoking (like everyone else in London) outside his double decker bus, pointed us in the wrong direction. Not to blame him entirely, we certainly weren't exactly on top of things either... but, needless to say, we did a lot of walking. Jamie spotted a Lavazza coffee sign hanging from a window, and suddenly we realized THAT was our hostel! Right in front of us. Isabella, the Walrus receptionist was very helpful and checked us in, showed us up to our room (dungeon) and quickly got us some MUCH NEEDED water (especially for Em!)

As if we didn't remember we were staying in a hostel... we were quite surprised by the quality and cleanilness of the place... and the amount of PEOPLE we would be sleeping with. Everyone else in the room was traveling alone (mostly guys), and no one wanted to talk to us! Everyone kept to themselves.

We locked up our packs, freshened up and hit the town!...walking, of course. Our evening in brief: We had fish and chips at a pub, Jamie discovered her ATM card didn't work in England (yikes), we had gelato in Covent Gardens (twice... a grand total of $30). To walk from Covent Gardens back to Waterloo was a little scary. It was dark and dirty and we were the only tourists (which made us feel vulnerable). Thankfully two nice bus drivers we talked to at the first gelato shop tipped us off to be careful and watch our bags. So naturally, the headlamp made an appearance.

We made it home safely and hit the hay (which we were later woken up by noisy roommates, and loud trains). The next morning we caught the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, walked through Green Park, saw the London Bridge (which was a little dissappointing in person), ate lunch (excellent Indian food...and Subway), and finally made our way to St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar.

Overall, we had a great time in London. People were very helpful, kind, and it was easy to navigate once we learned the ropes.

More to come soon.. we'll update you on Paris!

Love,
K,J,E!