Arrival in London
Trip Start
Mar 08, 2009
1
5
Trip End
Mar 14, 2009
London, England, United Kingdom
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Our flight arrived to London Gatwick early in the morning. We took the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, and from there we took a taxi to our hotel. The first Brit I had a conversation with in England: the cab driver (Side note: In London, taxi driving is a respectable job.) I was so tired, but I remember the driver was very friendly. He was talkative, and he pointed out some of London's well known sites on the way to our hotel, like Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square. Once we got closer, he explained to us that the Metropole was in an Arab area. Interesting, I thought. A lot of signs on restaurants and stores had Arab written underneath the English. The Hilton London Metropole is a huge hotel. Our reason for staying there: my parents, my sister, and I were able to fit in one room! Once we were in the room, I opened the window. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting something different from what I saw. The buildings reminded me of those I'd seen in the movie Eurotrip when they were in Eastern Europe. Even though we were tired, we left the hotel. We went took the Tube (my first time on the London underground!!!) to the Covent Garden area. We had lunch and did some shopping. Covent gardens was alright, I suppose. It was where I first discovered that London has some pretty depressing weather. We went back to the hotel and had an early dinner at one of its restaurants. I had some really good French onion soup! We tried going to bed really early, but I seemed to have more energy than before. I finally fell asleep. I woke up thinking it must have been at least 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, but my sister who was still awake whispered to me, "It's 9:30 PM." Out of bed and to the lobby bar we went. Then we wandered across the street to a little market with internet. We bought a couple bags of types of Haribo gummies that we don't have in the United States. I love gummies. By midnight we were pretty tired, so we went to back to the room and slept.
