Our Trip to Europe

Day 1 - London

After an extremely long flight, 32 hours of not sleep, we finally arrived at Gatwick Airport. Of course, the one and only bag that we checked didn’t make it and we had to arrange to have it delivered to our hotel the next day. At least they knew it was still in Cleveland.

We purchased our rail passes for the day and got on the Express train to London. We were impressed with the condition of the train until we found out that we had seated ourselves in First Class and had to move back to the “cheap seats”!! It was still nice but definitely a step down.

Made it to our hotel, checked in and got rid of our luggage. No air conditioning in the hotel!! Took a deep breath and set out for our first day in RAINY London. Our first stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral. Unfortunately you could not take any pictures inside the cathedral. It was absolutely beautiful. The paintings and mosaics on the three-tiered dome ceiling were amazing and contained a lot of gold. We walked down the same nave that Princess Diana walked down during her wedding ceremony. Underneath the cathedral is the crypt where many famous Britains are buried.

The rain continued throughout the day, sometimes a sprinkle and other times a downpour with wind strong enough to blow my umbrella inside out. We stopped for lunch at a French café next to the cathedral. After lunch, we headed for the British Museum. We saw the Rosetta Stone and a lot of Egyptian pieces. Unfortunately, by this time, Paul and I were running out of steam so we headed back to the hotel via the Underground Rail with a quick stop at good old American Starbucks for a caffeine jolt.

We plan on hitting the sack early tonight and will try to be at the Tower of London tomorrow when it opens at 10am.