Day 1 - London

(am loving the increased # of icons! I've been hoping for this for some time.)

I'm having a hard time readjusting to East Coast time after the trip. It would probably help if I would not go to bed at 9:30, but there it is.

So - Day 1. We decided to fly out of Jacksonville as it's much cheaper. We left in plenty of time; of course we didn't count on a huge traffic jam on the Interstate in the middle of the morning. While we were stuck in traffic, we got rearended by a lady in an older SUV who claimed that her brakes suddenly failed. If that were the case, why did she hit us hard enough to crumple the bumper in stopped traffic? I was really angry, as you can imagine; since shipbrook was driving anyway, I let him deal with her; what if we missed going to London because of a stupid fender-bender? Though I knew we had a few hours before the big flight left NYC. There was a DoT guy nearby who called the highway patrol...who eventually showed up, and gave her the ticket despite her claims of a vehicular malfunction (despite claiming to have no brakes, she drove away - interesting, no?). We wound up missing the flight to NYC. Since we had an accident report, they were able to reticket us, but we had to fly into Laguardia, not JFK where our London flight was taking off from. "Just take a cab," the ticket agent said. That seemed pretty intimidating, but we had no choice, so off we went to Laguardia.

Once in NYC, we noticed a shuttle bus service to JFK, so we opted for that. Fortunately we had plenty of time to make the London flight even with the delay. We flew Virgin Atlantic - very nice, they have a neat entertainment system for each seat with loads of movies and video games to choose from, but since it was an overnight flight, I opted to try and get some sleep. Those seats are pretty uncomfortable, however, and I don't think I got much rest that night.

The flight was surprisingly fast for the distance covered - under six hours, I think - and we arrived in London, checked in with immigration and claimed our luggage by around 9 am. We bought two passes for the Underground that would last the week, and boarded the Tube that would take us to our hotel. I am a suburban girl and have never lived in a city with decent mass transit, so I was extra impressed with the tube technology. It seemed like magic - get on a train and whoosh! you're in another part of the city. We did have a bit of a walk with our luggage, especially since we didn't exactly know where we were going. Eventually we found our hotel and were able to check in early. The room was small, certainly smaller than most American hotel rooms, but it had a decent view and was very clean. I longed for a nap, but shipbrook said that would be bad; instead, we showered and decided to start hitting the museums. First museum: The National Portrait Gallery. We did stop for lunch first. I think there are a bunch of chain pubs that look like the real deal. We kept winding up in them, but the beer and food there was quite good, much better than a chain here in the states (think Bennigans). Fish and chips, yum!

The portrait gallery was fab! The first painting confronting us was the huge portrait of Sir Thomas More and family. Unfortunately, there was a big group of school kids on a field trip in the Tudor room, so we had to skip ahead and then double back to see Elizabeth I. I especially enjoyed getting a close look at the Darnley portrait. They also happen to have a Shakespeare exhibition, for which we had to pony up a few pounds (the rest of the gallery was free). This display was worth it, lots of documents, paintings, and extant clothes from the era all in one room for me to enjoy. I was tired, and for this reason didn't find a lot to buy in the shops. We went back to our room, and I prevailed upon shipbrook to let us take a nap: after all, if it was rainy and we were tired and we were home, we would take a nap, right? After that, we went out to dinner. I think we ate at an Indian restaurant near the hotel, which was quite tasty, and we planned Day 2.