Day 1 June 11, 2011 - London

Hello again -

Well this was an exciting first day! I can tell you that the kids are in their rooms, wether they are sleeping yet or not remains to be unknown at this moment but they were all whooped and I am sure once they touched their pillows it felt might good! ;o))

Here a summery of the day with it's first day adventures and funny obstacles:

After our transfer through all of London (it was the Queen's birthday and many streets were closed off for the "Parade of Colors"), we got to the hotel. The good news was that all the rooms were ready to be moved in already, the bad news was that we only had 20 minutes to quickly get the day bags ready and move on.... Oh well, we didn't come to sleep, did we?!? We took public transportation (tram and tube) into town and started our walking tour from Waterloo Station, past the London Eye (big ferris wheel), crossing Westminster Bridge over to Big Ben, the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, where Prince William and his Kate just got married recently! There we had a 45minute self guided tour through this thousand year old place of worship, pretty awesome! Walking down to Trafalgar Square, "Kimberly surprised us" with a well planned demonstration of hundreds of naked bicyclists.... yes, you read correctly: Naked Bicyclists! Welcome to Europe - that's how you get somebodies attention to use less oil! ;o))) There were more demonstrations going on for multiple actions along the square and as much as we all would have wanted to stay and listen, given our KFESA spirit, we also had more of London exploration ahead of us. Next stop was Convent Garden - an old market area converted into cool restaurants, bars and shops. There we had some free time to get a taste of London's many differenten cuisines - it is a myth that English food is bad, it has so much to offer and is super yummy - as long as it is not kidney pie....

From there we went on the tube again (love that word, much better than underground) and went to our restaurant for actual dinner. Not quite sure where we were location wise, but at that point everyone was just really tired and hungry, and we all enjoyed being out of the hustle and bustle for a bit. And little did we know that our train ride back to the hotel (the trains are running mostly above ground, so not to be mistaken for the tube!) would be very exciting....

Right after our first stop it suddenly stopped, making it's way up hill on the tracks - first we thought somebody might have pushed the emergency button (of course nobody in our group ;o) but then soon heard over the intercom, that the train had troubles receiving signals and that they were going to work on it as fast as possible.... Well about an hour later or so - after many acrobatic swings and work out moves on the bars , singing, chatting, writing messages to the other kids in the next car over via paper holding it up to the window (how inventive are these kids!?!), eating chocolate and laughing - we finally moved on - halleluja! We were told to get off the train at the next station since they had to continue working on this problem and no trains would go. We were trying to figure out an alternative transportation and way to our hotel, which was about 2 miles away, as well as a way of finding a 'loo spot' - there was no way we could continue on for many of us without (Thank goodness for McDonald and it's 'public bathrooms' - and for Mark taking a whole bunch of kids there!). Anyways after about 20 minutes of 'doing business' the trains were back up and running and with only a few stops away we got back to the hotel a bit later than expected but with a story to tell - hey, who ever gets to use the inside of the trains as a jungle gym....?!?! :o))))

So now everyone is getting some rest and well deserved sleep for another fun day out in London tomorrow. A city tour by coach (yes a coach, which means our own bus - a bus in English terms is a public transportation), an educational tour through the Globe Theater, some free time in the afternoon with hopefully some museum and shopping trips to satisfy all the needs and then our performance of "All's well that ends well" at the Globe.

I will be posting a few photos as well and hope that you all enjoyed catching up on our day. Please keep in mind that I can only get email at WIFI places, so sometimes I don't get your comments for a day or so.

Good night from London - Niki and 39 sleeping critters