London Swings

We finally made it to London. We have been travelling since 10:00 am Prince George time yesterday. It is now 1 pm Prince George time (9:00 London Time), and sleep has been scarce.

Our flight to Vancouver was quite uneventful, aside from being a propellor plane. However, somehow Air Canada managed to misplace a pilot for our flight to Calgary, so we had to run across the airport to a new flight, which had already been delayed an hour and a half. We disembarked in Calgary at the same time our flight to London was supposed to be taking off, but luckily (?) the flight crew from the Calgary trip and the flight crew for the London trip were the same.

In case you have never tried to sleep on an overnight plane ride, I will let you know that it is not the most relaxing experience of your life. In fact, Darcy, my mother and myself were able to snatch maybe three hours of sleep, but my dad and my brother got none. So, here is a pro tip: go business class. I hear it's really nice. At least, they have chairs that somewhat resemble beds.

So, in response to certain people's snarky comments about not updating yesterday, we were over top of the Atlantic Ocean during our regularly scheduled update, so we did not have really any way to post.

So, London. London decided to cast away the weather forecast we had seen, of rain and clouds, and instead became incredibly hot and sunny. Still humid though. So, we were hot, tired and dying of thirst, basically all day, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves, mostly. At least, no one has even threatened to kill anyone, so we are doing great.

Upon arriving in London, I immediately lost our travel information for the whole trip, including plane tickets and where our hotel was. It did not make me, or my mother, very impressed. Luckily, after running all over the station, went to Lost and Found, I asked a helpful "biscuit" vendor where it ended up, and she knew exactly who had it (a cleaning lady). I have since recovered it, and we have no more panics about that.

Once we resolved that, we got our Oyster Cards (which are a lot like the Octopus Cards in Hong Kong, and therefore awesome), and navigated the "Tube". Since I had my instructions, this was not very difficult, although there were some tense moments when we emerged from the station to discover that they have decided not to label any of their streets.

We then embarked on an epic adventure over to some Palace that we are close to. It was very very busy with tourists, for some unknown reason. I guess there are a lot of Monarchists in England? Anyways, there were a lot of tourists, which was very annoying, because we were trying to be tourists.

But, Bucki...some palace was out in the sun, so we walked over to Green Park, which is a pretty descriptive name for what it is. We laid around a bunch, until we were motivated enough to walk to Hyde Park, because apparently we love parks.

But it turns out that London has fabulous parks, and in particular Hyde Park is beautiful. There are flowers and trees and a lake and fountains and swans (and rats, which I guess is cool?).

Another thing that we noticed is that in every single park we went to or passed by (as I mentioned we saw a lot of them today), there were people sleeping under trees and things. At first I thought they were homeless people, but they were just tired. They might also just be homeless, but if so, they have pretty nice clothes.

We then retired back to the Hotel to write this blog, when I noticed that I neglected to bring the Camera Connector for the iPad. So, after not very long, the solution presented itself. TO THE APPLE STORE!!!!!

So, Darcy and I decided to take the Tube to the Apple Store which is fairly close to our hotel. If you have never been to an Apple Store, then you have not lived. It was the weirdest store I have ever been in. Both Darcy and I forgot our cameras, but it was like a big apple party, where it was really hard to tell that it was a store. In fact, although I paid for my camera connector kit, I am not entirely convinced I did it at the right place, or even that there is a right place. Hopefully the money I paid went to an employee and not an apple enthusiast in a blue shirt.

Darcy and I then went exploring a bit in London's West End near Oxford Circus (I may have some google maps information sometime when I am not so tired). We found the greatest toy store of all time, called Hamleys. It was six stories of magic. Every floor was amazing, and I wished I was 6. So instead, we just pretended we were.

Anyways, it was a very fun day, but now we have to go to bed, as we are VERY TIRED. Below, enjoy a slideshow of our epic adventures!.