1st day in London!

We are here!!

Got to London after getting caught in air congestion at heathrow and circling round and round and round till we could land!!! A long flight but no stress at all.

Heathrow is an eye opener - you walk for miles it seems and everyone is in such a hurry! Lots of queues but we were given fast track immigration passes and by-passed them all!

Managed to sort the tube with the help of our first english lady at the counter- very helpful and sweet, then down the escalator to the tube, where we encountered our 2nd english person. A young guy in a big hurry to get passed us to the train, which shut on him as he made a dramatic dive for it and he yelled at us "oh you...... fecking people"! said in a very english accent. I had to laugh as unfortunately you get that in airports where people have suitcases!!!! Never mind..

Found our hotel ok- getting there was a bit of work with luggage, but there were no stressed words at all- we made a good team really since we were knackered! Hotel is really good, small by our standards but I knew this in advance. It is clean, has air conditioning and tea and coffee, so its great!

We went to bed around 9.30pm england time and thought we would crash all night after being up for 24 hours, but Graeme and I were both awake after 4 hours?!@#@! So a wee bit tired today!

Dad coined it beautifully on one of their trips to england where he told Mum that her eyes "looked like boiled sweets on sticks"!!!! That is EXACTLY how they feel, like the red, stripey cremota lollipops!!!

Had a amazing day today Saturday- our first in London and picture perfect blue sky, couldnt have asked for better. They said on the radio that it has been the warmest April in 140 years.

Did a hop on, hop off bus tour of London today and a Thames cruise. Amazing to actually see the sights you always dreamed of and experience the feeling of the city. More foreigners than londoners and lots of foreign languages being spoken everywhere! Funny, have posted a pic of the 3 of us outside buckingham palace and I had put an apple core in the gutter outside as there were no rubbish bins anywhere, and Graeme growled that you DONT litter outside the queens house - so I went back and took a photo of it as proof of my insolence!!!

Quiet night tonight to catch up and we will hopefully get to Chatham tomorrow to meet my cousin and neice for the first time.

Hope NZ is still warmish and sunny?!
Denise:-)