Lucky and London

Where in the world do we start!?

Well first off I am going to start by saying that we made it onto our flight to London. The flight was really nice and smooth. We had yummy food and my mom and I each got to sleep for about an hour to two each. Luckily, when my mom woke up her headache was gone. From all the stress, lack of sleep, and little amount of food we got we were feeling a little under the weather to say the least.

While we were in the airport we meet two ladies who were also traveling to London. One lived permanently in Whales and the other was meeting two girlfriends here for a tour just like us, only not our tour. We were telling the story to the elderly lady at the airport (72 years old), and she was telling us how it was her first flight to Boston and probably her last because she hated flying. As we continued to tell her our story she started feeling bad for us and offered her grandson up to drive us to "catch-up" with the bus. We just laughed and said "it was sweet, but we think we could manage." That was just the first encounter we had with nice and helpful people.

As the plane landed (ON TIME) we made our way to the subway and took an hour subway ride to South Kensington Street. Then we got off of the subway and tried to track down a taxi, which was a little harder than people made it out to be. First off...the taxi lines are in the middle of the streets, and you have to try and catch one without people in it. We stood there for a good 20 minutes with no luck, so we started walking our way down the street. With no luggage might I add. Did I forget to mention that the airplane lost our luggage!!?? While we were on our way to Boston..our luggage decided to travel to New York and take a sightseeing detour. Naughty luggage!

Once we finally caught a cab after walking a good 6 blocks we had it take us straight to our Hotel! We got out and were excited to finally have a room to stay in and shower. After all...we didn't get to shower or sleep for 3 days while we were hoping from one plane to the next. Apparently airports are homes, but showers are NOT apart of their 5 star accommodations package! Back to the point...we went to the front desk all ready to get a room...and the hotel canceled our reservations because we were a day late...EVEN THOUGH we called and told them! It ended up being ok because they got us a room, but we had to wait 2 hours to get it!

Since we didn't have any luggage we went down the street to a "Westfield Shopping Center" and bought ourselves some new clothes. Based on our luck on the trip so far we were NOT taking ANY chances! We were able to buy some new "knickers" a.k.a "underwear" and some new clothes. The airport has to pay us back for them too! :)

Once we got back to the hotel we were surprised to not see our luggage there, because the airport had promised that they were re-routing our luggage and it should be at our hotel shortly. We spent the next few hours with them on the phone and they said that the luggage was in fact at the airport, but they were not able to locate it and we needed to come down. So the hotel got us a personal driver and took us BACK to the airport (our best friend), and we had to be escorted by security to find our bags. Being completely pestimistic at this point we figured that everything had gone wrong and there was no way it would be there. It just was not in our cards; however, the minute we opened up the doors I spotted my luggage and ran to it with full force! My mom then noticed her luggage and we jumped up and down together in excitement! The security was laughing at us, but we were to excited to care!

Before leaving for the airport to see if we could find our luggage...a lady on a different tour than us offered my mom half her clothes and one of her luggages. She said she had overpacked and she wanted mom to have clothes to wear. That was the second gesture that just showed how awesome people can really be in a time of need.

After one terrible thing happening after the other....there really was no more going south. We had an optimistic attitude the whole time and it ended up paying off. We got out luggage, we are in London, and we are about the have a trip of a lifetime.

We are off to dinner now and then bed to hopefully get some rest for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be in Oxford, Avon-Stratford, and Warwick.

Hopefully the worst of the trip is over and it is all fun from here on out.

UNtil then....

Kayla and Sandy

Cheerios!

BTW...subways here are called "TUBES" and elevators "LIFTS" who knew?