We
were so relieved to get off that plane. We followed other purple
backpacks and gathered in the terminal for more instructions.
It was
Amina's 18th birthday and we were tired but excited.
Right off the bat the Londoners with their accents were fun to listen
to and Amina made note that the first thing someone said to her was:
“Mind the trolley” (they were moving the baggage carts).
Luggage
pick up went smoothly – it looked like everyone's luggage made it
to London including the large band instruments.
We met our London
Coordinators – Charlie and Jody in the airport and after a bit of a
wait, we were led to the blue bus which we would be calling home for
quite a large part of the trip. Our “Quaxis” (German for frog as
we later figured out) was driven by Gerd who was an amazing driver
but not the most friendly bus driver I've ever met. Since there were
students and families from all over Oklahoma, the kids (sitting in
the back of the bus) didn't know each other very well except for the
3 days they spent at the pre-tour camp. Maybe this, along with some
jet lag and the new surroundings, made our first bus ride pretty
calm. That changed a lot by the end of the trip, though.
I
really got a kick out of the traffic moving along the left side of
the street. Amazingly, the weather was cool and partly cloudy in
London – very nice. Instead of heading straight for the hotel, we
were actually taken to Windsor first where they let us roam for a few
hours before re-boarding the bus. We crossed the bridge and walked
through a shopping center but we didn't have any British Pounds yet
so we looked for an ATM right away.
We
walked the streets a bit and decided to have a “traditional”
lunch of fish and chips. We were seated outside at Castle Cod and
ordered 3 fish and chip baskets (regular cod which we were told that
there was only a subtle difference between cod and haddock) which
were a bit pricey at about 8GBP each for a single large piece of
breaded and deep fried cod with so-so chips (fries). The fish was
good but none of us finished our chips.
We
walked over to the entrance of Windsor castle but the entrance fee
was about 20 GBP per person and would take a few hours to see so we
opted to just walk around the castle instead. The day turned out to
be sunny and gorgeous.
We walked around the castle, used a bathroom
at the train station, and then made our way over to the River Thames
where you could buy 2 bags of bird feed (bread and bread crumbs) for
1 GBP. The swans, geese, and ducks were not shy about taking our
food. Who knew that swans actually have little teeth.
We crossed a
bridge over the river and just looked around. We walked right past
Eton College which we later Googled and found out that it was not
what we refer to as a college but, rather, a boarding school for boys
aged 11-18. Their uniforms were very formal looking – their coats
had tails!
We
re-boarded our bus at the appointed time and headed to our hotel, the
Thistle City Barbican Hotel where the entire group was staying.
Instructions were given along the way – the kids were rooming
together with 2-3 per room. The girls were mostly in building 2 and
the adults and boys were mostly in building 1 which were separated by
a one-way driveway.
After quite the impressive maneuvering of the
buses along the alley near the hotel, room assignments were given and
there was a bit of pandemonium as we tried to get the suitcases off
the bus in those small alleys and figure out where we were supposed
to go for the first time. This scene was repeated many times during
the next couple weeks and we got much better at it with time.
Luckily at this first hotel, there were 2 elevators – albeit slow.
Of note throughout our trip, hotels consistently consider the lobby
to be the ground floor. As we ended up taking the stairs a lot in
the next few hotels, we had to remember that the 2nd floor
was 2 floors up.
We
had a decent sized room with a king bed and a fairly roomy bathroom.
There weren't enough hangers or closet space but there was a good
sized windowsill that I used to put my packing cubes on. The windows
tilted open some and although there was no air conditioning, the
hotel did provide us with a fan and with both windows open and the
fan running – it was cool at night. It felt great to take a shower
and we figured out that our power strip along with a converter worked
well for our various devices.
We
met in the dining area in building 2 with the kids in one room and
the adults/staff in another room. Dinner was a served buffet with
salad, chicken, and haricot verts. We were able to celebrate
Amina's birthday during dinner with a lotus candle on a piece of
chocolate cake and the students singing Happy Birthday. Her birthday
was the first of quite a few during the trip.
After
dinner, we headed out of the hotel and walked to St Paul's cathedral,
the Millennium bridge, and over to Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
We
bought some candied peanuts from a street vendor and learned a new
word: busking - which are street performers who usually do it for
money.
London is an impressive city but just as every other large
city, there's constantly construction going on and the skyline was
dotted with cranes everywhere you looked. We also noticed that in
London, parking is a free-for-all meaning if a spot was available,
you could park in any direction and that was apparently legal.
We
walked back to our hotel and weren't up for long – just long enough
to upload the day's pictures to our Facebook group over the hotel's
free Wifi. It had been a very long day and we had an early morning.
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