We made it to England!!

We have checked into our hotel and spent our first full day in London, England.  We actually experienced quite a bit of luck on our way to Europe.  Our first flight from MKE to Charolette was a small plane, but fortunately we landed the first row seats and Paul was able to stretch his legs out.  The seat change came by chance, as Orbitz didnt' confirm our seats in the first place, so we had to scramble to find two seats together. 

Our layover in Charolette went very smoothly, not a lot of waiting at all.  I was racing to try to find a Starbucks so I could load up on treats before the long flight, which I found out was completely unnecessary!  We by chance had the exit row, which left plenty of space for leg room and stretching out.  Shortly after reaching cruising speed they came by with a warm dinner of pasta, salad, wheat roll, and cholcolate cake.  It was a delicious meal for coming from an airline stewardess. After demolishing that meal, I sat back and watched a few movies over coffee, diet coke, and orange juice.  I was able to watch the King's Speech, which I would highly reccommend.  I also watched a move about a trial where someone was found guilty of murder (of which he was innocent) and his sister devoted her life to becoming a layer and proving his innocence.  It was also a really good movie and perfect for the flight.

After the movies finished, I tried resting my eyes but I had absolutely no luck and stayed awake the entire flight.  We landed in London and our next challenge was finding the trains to take us downtown to our hotel.  I was super tired, and cranky, and worried we weren't going to get downtown.  We navigated the system of trains just fine and make it to our hotel around 10AM, while walking and riding at a liesurely pace.  After checking in we crashed for a few hours and tried to take nap.  I was so frazzeled when the alarm went off, I barely knew who, or where I was... haha, classic.

We had a relaxing afternoon strolling down King Street which is full of shops, restaurants and coffee shops.  It looks like they have a nice open air market in the mornings.  I indulged in a Vanilla Chai and took in the sites and culture of the busy London streets.  We walked back to the hotel and just hung out for the rest of the night.  We're both pretty exhausted, and we needed to plan our next day of events - London Bus and River Tour!

Some more fun facts, we realized that our hotel room costs 200 pounds, which is freakishly expensive in American money, and way more than Paul and I would dream on forking over for a hotel stay.  We have free breakfast lined up tomorrow morning (with the tour) and that's 17 pounds worth of food.  You can bet that at that price, Paul and I will be shoveling the food in and feeling good about getting our monies worth.  We are planning to get up early, work out, and grab breakfast.  Paul has a 19 mile run planned, he's going to head downtown for the first 8 miles, and then finish the rest on the treadmill in the gym.  I'll dabble in the workout room for the morning to try to work off all of these packaged/processed snack bars I've been fueling myself with!

Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures soon, and I'll have plenty after tomorrow's city tour.  I'm on a shared hotel lobby computer, so getting pictures on here would be a feat.  So, it's off to be for now, and an early morning tomorrow!  We're hear, not yet well rested, but we plan to change that.  I need some sleep so I can fully enjoy the sites and time here!  Our trip has begun...