Schlepping

 So today was the longest day ever, probably because it was 2 days and I only got like 3 TOPS hours of sleep.  Catherine and I made it to MIA airport and onto the plane without any glitches, suprisingly... the weight of my bag was a cuase for some stress but it went through OK. We took off on time and landed in London, England at 7 ish... then we went through cutsoms, collected our bags and looked for the Heathrow Express, the train to take us to Kings Cross Station where the Hostel was. We found that OK, got on and in 15 mins. we were in Paddington Station... well that's where the schlepping started. We COULD NOT figure out how to get on a second train that would take us to Kings Cross Station. We asked about 8 different people who all told us to do different things. Stairs have never been more my enemy... We finally figured it out after about an hour of schlepping up and down stairs speaking to unfriendly people and some friendly people who obviously didn't know what we were asking.
  After making it to Kings Cross we had to find the Clink, we asked a few people who thought we were talking about a jail. We schlepped our bags from about 270 something Kings Cross Roda to 78 Kings Cross Road... They told us we couldn't check in until 2:30, it was about 12:15, so we decided to buy a bus pass and see some sights. We went down to Westminister and found Buckinham Palce, Parliment (where we noticed there was a lot of hulabaloo, TVs, guards, people, protestors, apparently they are electing a new prime minister!), Big Ben, and Catherine road the London Eye. We took the Bus back, no glitches, and checked into the Clink. This place really is like jail, but nicer. I have gotten lost so many times and I have gotten lots of funny looks at my matching luggage, I am VERY out of place, but I switched over to my duffel so I think I will fit in a little better.
When we got settled into our room of 14, we made friends with some Australians, they are going on a 36 day tour tomorrow, and then we decided to brace the cold again (it was very chilly here today, I don't know the actual temp.) and took the underground SUCCESSFULLY to Oxford Carnival or something like that. We did much better this time and made it there and back all on our own.
There were times today when I really really really wished my parents were here so I could ust follow them and they could decide what was a good deal for money and they could figure out where we were supposed to be. I have never been more appreciative of our family vacations together when they did all the planning. I almost cried and I am not going to lie there were a couple of times that Catherine and I were about to kill each other, but by the end we were just laughing because really that's all you can do. Overall it was a successful day and we feel a bit more conifdent in our navigation abilites and my map reading abilities (I bought one Mom, it's pretty good). Tomorrow we leave for Paris and I need a shower and some sleep. Hopefully I will get to write about Paris tomorrow, I am very excited! They are taking us on a city lights tour, should be fun!


Because Morgan wanted to know: I had chicken and veggies for dinner with taramasu? for dessert and I slept through bfast this morning, but Catherin gave me half of her bagel egg and cheese thing.
I watched Julie and Julia... very cute!
Sleep tight, as the current time here is 9:45 ish :)

<3
Amanda