I've Been to London . . .

It's been a packed last few days!

On Monday, we made it to Atlanta to catch our flight, despite the car breaking down on the way! It was terrible: Amanda's dad had been saying nice things about the car for three solid hours, when it abruptly decided that it wouldn't crank anymore after we stopped at a truck stop outside Atlanta. He finally got it to start after playing with some fuses, and we made it to the airport. At the baggage drop-off point, the car decided that it wouldn't crank again, and required towing to get things fixed. Good news is, we had no problems at security, and managed to make it onto our flight with no problems.

Our flight was uneventful, and reasonably pleasant (a far cry from that horrid flight to Germany back in 2006). After arriving in London (Heathrow), we went through border control, baggage claim, and customs, and then took the Tube into London proper. We deposited our luggage at Waterloo Station, and took our backpacks to our hotel, which was within walking distance of Victoria Station. After checking in, we were well into the afternoon, so we grabbed lunch on the run, and headed off to the Tower of London.

We had to hurry a bit at the Tower of London, but we did manage to see everything. I enjoyed it, although I think there were some parts that Amanda would have prefered to have skipped. I got a lapel pin with the "White Tower" (the big building in the center dating to the Norman Conquest). Afterward, we purchased our railcards so we could use our tickets to Exeter.

After everything else was closed, we made our way to Hard Rock Cafe London, the little restraunt that started it all. We had a great time, and even got to visit the Hard Rock Vault, which is the only place in the world where you are allowed to touch Hard Rock's decorations. It is located in a former bank vault, underneath the Hard Rock London store. After our visit, we called it a night.

The next morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast in our hotel (which included Frosted Flakes . . . I never associated them with being British, but apparently they are!), and proceeded to Buckingham Palace. The tour there was wonderful, and we had a lovely time at the gift shops afterward. (They featured numerous children's items which featured "Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been . . ." on them, hence the title of this post.) We are going to have to go back to visit the Royal Mews, at the very least, and to do some shopping around at the gift shop.

When we finished at Buckingham Palace, we had just enough time to grab lunch at the Brass Monkey before returning to Waterloo Station to collect our luggage and catch our train to Exeter. When we arrived in Exeter, we looked for my host counsellor, who was meeting us at the train station. However, we couldn't find her. After a few minutes of searching, I was able to find a pay phone to call her from, and we discovered the problem: She was at Exeter St. David's (the main station in Exeter), and we were not. She assumed that we were at Exeter Central (which could easily be mistaken for the main station), but we were not. We were at Exeter St. Thomas, which is a little station that is lightly used. It took her about ten minutes to drive across town to collect us and our luggage, which, thankfully, only weighed around 250 lbs (110 kg) spread across eight bags.

Tomorrow, we'll be looking for a place to live, and trying to get a bank account opened up. Hopefully, we won't run into any problems, and we'll be able to get settled into somewhere in short order.