I arrived in London at around noon on Saturday. It was a long flight, and coupled with the fact that I had slept approximately 3 hours on Thursday night and around 1 hour on the plane - I was pretty tired. I was living on adrenaline at this point - something that I would learn to do on this trip quite often!
I claimed my backpack from the carosel and made may way over to the seemingly endless line for customs. The line moved fairly quickly and soon I was on my way to the Airbus stop for the bus to Russell Square.
I boarded the bus and immediately headed to the top level. It was at this point that I shed the native New Yorker attitude and officially became a tourist! I would wear this tourist hat for 18 days and learn a new found patience for the thousands of tourists that decend upon New York City each year. The bus ride from Heathrow to Russell Square on a Saturday afternoon is around 2 hours. I think that I suffered an adrenaline crash at this point, as I remember getting around 1 hour of sleep on this ride!
I arrived at the Imperial Hotel around 2PM. I had decided that I could not sleep at this point - or it would be days before my body cought up. I braved the London rains and did some sightseeing around Westminster. This was pretty dismal due to the rain and the large amount of people milling around. It was at this point that my almost brand new, super fancy camera started acting up! I was stressing due to the fact that I was at the beginning of my "trip of a lifetime" and my camera had just died! Remembering the first rule of successful travel, I took a deep breath and assured myself that somehow, I would deal with it.
I returned to my hotel in time to go to the meeting that Contiki holds on the night before a tour leaves London. The purpose of this meeting was to get together with the tour manager and participants of the tour that we were about to embark on to finalize paperwork, etc. At this point, it was Saturday evening (London time) and I had slept around 4 hours since the previous Thursday night!
I learned at this meeting that we would meet our driver, Dave at 6:45 AM when he picked us up and that our tour manager would be an Aussie named Daren. Daren was going to meet us the next day after we crossed the English Channel into France. I also learned that there were 8 seperate tours leaving the following day. They ranged from 14 - 38 days! Needless to say, there was a pretty diverse group of people in that room! Well, considering that I had not had any real sleep in days, the fact that I made it to around 8PM before I was ready to call it a night was a real accomplishment! I made my way back to my hotel and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
I thought all would be fine, but I realized (at around midnight when my stomach overrode my brain's desire to sleep) that I had forgotten to eat dinner! Luckily I was able to get some light food at the hotel's restaurant, and was back to sleep by 1AM. I knew the next day would be exciting, and I could not wait for it to come. I was starting my adventure, and would soon meet the group of people that I would spend the next 16 days with.
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The famous Tower of London. |
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Harrods Department Store. Great breakfasts here! |
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Was this a sign of things to come? Read on.... |
© 1998-2000 Geoffrey S. Cable
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