Hello from London

I'm here, safe and sound but extremely exhausted ( as are the other 4 girls)! The flight was good other than I was unable to sleep with all of the excitement so I got maybe an hour of sleep. So I have been up since Wednesday morning and it is 8:00 pm Thursday. Let me tell you I was so nervous going though passport control because we are not allowed to call this an internship, it applies that you are getting paid in which you need a visa for and none of us had. Therefore I was questioned about why I was here, what I would be doing, who I would be with, for how long, where and many more. We all were. Then began the adventure of getting from Gatwick to our hotel.

Oh what an adventure! Let me tell you, lugging around a 50 lb bag, 14 lb bag and 13 lb back pack onto the Gatwick Express to go to Victoria Station ( which we paid 2 for 1 by the way, about £10 each) then off and onto the underground (which we went the wrong way several times and went up an down several flights of stairs, oh my poor hands, arms and legs) We also paid £7 for a full day of the underground which is cheaper than what we would have needed to buy. We finally got to our hotel 4 hours after the plane landed! Like I said, Exhausted.

We decided to check out our rooms, find somewhere to get a bite to eat ( we ended up choosing a pub called The Chapel, which was cute, friendly workers and tasted pretty good, a bit over priced though for my budget but I was quite hungry and didn't want to go anywhere else), we also looked for phones, WIFI (super hard to find reliable WIFI). After another one of us arrived we decided to go to Piccadilly Circus. It was gorgeous, old buildings, still decorated from the Queens Jubilee and very crowded. We walked along a few of the streets and saw cozy allies filled with shops, brick pavement, flowers, and dangling lights. Afterwards we decided we had done enough walking for today and worked our way back to the hotel leading us to find this reliable WIFI coffee shop and only need to purchase one thing for two hours. So lovely because Starbucks just wasn't cutting it earlier.

If you are taking anything away from reading this I hope it is that you shouldn't pack giant suitcases full of stuff when you will be traveling through a very crowded underground. Also that WIFI is hard to come by.

Tomorrow we are planning to either go on the double decker bus tour and visit all the famous typical touristy spots, or get the cheap underground day pass again, navigate everywhere on our own and save some money.

I will have to post more pictures sometime tomorrow night because I forgot my camera in the hotel room.

Cheers!