Day 1-The Big Sites

This morning we landed around 7am and went straight to our hotel to drop things off and begin sightseeing.  The hotel staff is hilarious, especially a guy named Richie who speaks with such a thick British accent that we actually couldn't understand half the things he said.  But he was very entertaining when we told him we were starting off by going to Westminster Abbey ("What's that?" he joked.)  He seemed disappointed that we are going to Paris after London: "WHY? They hate us over there?  I could send you to French restaurant here in London that will get you used to the French experience.  They have awful service--they'll drop a pot of onion soup on your lap and pretend they don't notice!  He must like us though because he upgraded our room and now we have a super awesome room with a sofa, sitting area and two desks (in case mom and I both want to write novels here at the same time.)

After eating some breakfast, we went to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.  The building was so striking and beautiful--it was almost surreal.  But of course it was zoo of tourists (including ourselves I suppose) and it continued onto Westminster Abbey.  The Abbey had so many things to look at.  I think the coolest was probably the oldest door in England which is about 1000 years old and still stands in its original structure in the Abbey.

Then of course, it started to rain, and then it started to rain harder, and suddenly it was pouring when it had been sunny 15 minutes before.  We decided to go to the hotel at the point, but the rest of our day kind of dragged on because we were so exhausted. We went to Harrod's (the zoo of zoos) and came out with a chicken pie from the food stalls.  We tried to stay awake the whole day to get on the right time zone, so we kept moving and strolled to Buckingham Palace.  It was even bigger than we both thought it would be and we got to the see the changing of the guards.  It was pretty neat, but after the changing of the guards I sat down on the floor and fell asleep for a few minutes.

And then...

...cod and chips for dinner!

Hopefully tomorrow we'll have more energy!