Friday.

Our first day in London was a little rough. The flight over was great - very smooth, comfortable ride, Will slept most of the time. Everyone around him on the plane thought he was so cute when we were taking off and he said, "We're goin' up! We're goin' UP!" Funny, though, they were not as impressed upon landing, when he shouted, "We're goin' down! We're goin' DOWN!!" But anyway, we landed at Heathrow at 6:10am London time, which for us translated into 1:10 in the morning, our time. Of course we could not check-in to our hotel until 3pm, but they did store our bags for us so we could do some exploring. We call it, Extremely Tired Zombie Americans Take On London. We did a lot, though, including the National Gallery, where we saw several famous works of art - including DaVinci's Virgin of the Rocks, Van Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage, and Van Gogh's Sunflowers. We found an outdoor cafe in Victoria Embankment Park, where for our first English meal, Jack ordered the "American Breakfast." This was basically just eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast, and, for some reason, baked beans, which I have honestly never been given with breakfast in an American restaurant. The English seem to think we are a bean-loving people. Our room still not ready, we wandered across the Jubilee Bridge to the southbank of the Thames. There we boarded the London Eye, a rather big ferris wheel type observation ride. We really enjoyed the ride, and when our pod reached the top, we were able to see a beautiful panoramic view of the city. For dinner, we wandered into a quaint little English market (imagine, if you will, a 7-11), grabbed a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and yes, because we are on vacation and all, some jelly. All-in-all, a great first day.