London

So after a 7 hour cramped plane ride we were finally dumped at the London Gatwick Airport early, EARLY this morning. We stood in the customs line, listening to the loud americans (including us) chattering on about the flight, food and who they met on the plane, while the Brits stared and rolled their eyes at how obnoxious Americans were.

Anyway, we spent the day walking. I'd like to say we planned it, but it actually just happened that we stumbled upon the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. We got there at 11 and there were all these tourists just standing there. Stivo and Jess were dissapointed about the Palace. Stivo commented that the Queen could EASILY be knocked off because the place itself was only a few stories and it seemed like all the windows were pretty visible. Jess pointed out it was probably not great to say that in front of hundreds of policemen with huge weapons. So we moved on.

We caught the royal band playing as we walked further. We were happy we got to see them play up close and without all the tourists around. But then it kind of got to be annoyning because wherever we walked, we ran into more redcoated men with huge hats, big guns and horses, followed by the immediate hoard of camera crazy tourists. Eventually we walked up to Picadilly Circus just to get out of the way of all the new horse crap that was being created.

Picadilly Circus is like Time Square I think. Big billboards.. umm... stores... traffic... people. Yeah, I didn't see what the big fuss was about. Then of course I wanted to see the Soho area which Rick Steves' had tabbed London's Redlight District. But it was the middle of the day, didn't look to redlight-y. We did by tickets there to see Wicked tonight which I'm pretty excited about. I'm trying really really hard to supress my geekiness about the book. I just told Jess and Stivo it was about the Wicked Witch of the West though of course I could have dorkily talked about the backstory all the way back to the hostel (20 minute trip).

Pictures soon. My 20 minutes at the internet cafe is about to run out!