Hey! Welcome to my blog. I decided this would be easier to keep everyone informed than mass emails, and I also thought it would be a fun project. I really don't know how it will go...I will at least have one entry though! We'll see if I can keep it up throughout the trip. I will try to update at least weekly if not more often, and I'm looking to post pictures somehow. I'm not sure how to do it because this server can't handle to many pictures. I might do flickr or photobucket or something like that and link to it. If anyone has any ideas, please email me and I can try it out. Also, any other suggestions or requests are appreciated! Anyways, I imagine the first few entries will be rather long since so much is new, and then when things settle down a little bit it will probably be much shorter. So, here it goes...

Our journey to Rome began from LAX on Saturday evening. At approximately 9:30 PM, Mike and I left Los Angeles on a direct flight to London on British Airways. I think the flight was a little over ten hours, but with all the time change it was hard to keep track. I had planned on getting some work done for my first essay for my writing class, as the due date is rapidly approaching. However, not surprisingly, I was easily distracted and never got a chance to begin.

Foremost on the agenda was the awesome entertainment system. There were some great movie choices, and it was a struggle for me to decide which movie to watch. I decided on The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington, my favorite actor. Unfortunately, as I went to plug in my headphones, I found that someone had broken off part of a plug in the jack, preventing me from plugging mine in. I paged the flight attendants for assistance, but there was nothing they could do besides offer me a seat change to a middle seat. Stubborn as I am, I chose to stay in my seat. I found that if I held the plug at the right angle, I could still get sound. As a result, I was able to watch my movie, but my hand was quite sore by the end. I thought the movie was great, but not spectacular. Denzel was awesome as usual.

By this time I was quite tired and decided to attempt some sleep, which I managed without to much trouble. I'm not sure how long I actually slept, but I would guess between three and four hours. When I woke up, I was still not in the mood to work on the paper (no surprise there) and pulled out my book, Flight of Eagles by Jack Higgins. It's a WWII novel which is set in London and Berlin. After reading for awhile, we had about an hour left before landing in London. Mike and I decided to watch an episode of Entourage to finish off the flight.

We were served two meals during the flight, which were both surprisingly delicious. For dinner we had chicken and mashed potatoes, with a nice salad and some pretty good cheesecake for dessert (this coming from someone who doesn't really like cheesecake). Then, for breakfast/lunch, we had a turkey sandwich. They were definitely better meals than what I am used to on domestic flights.

It was 3:30 PM in London when our plane arrived, and our connecting flight to Rome was not until the next morning at 7:00 AM. This allowed us the opportunity to leave Heathrow and go explore London. We found a place to leave our carry-on bags and then bought train tickets. We quickly discovered that the public transportation system here is way better than at home (as we expected, of course), making our little excursion quite easy. We got off “The Tube” at Westminster station and walked upstairs. The first thing we saw was Big Ben and what I believe is the Parliament Building. It was quite impressive and we walked halfway across the adjacent bridge to get a better view. This is also where we saw the Eye – the giant Ferris Wheel on the Thames River. Mike was leading this adventure, having done a similar jaunt in London last summer on the way home from Kenya. We walked back across the bridge and over to St. James Park. It was a pretty peaceful place, and Mike and I both came to the instant conclusion that Los Angeles is very lacking in pretty parks. We continued on to Buckingham Palace, also awesome and admired the huge fountain and statues out front. Mike is now inspired to achieve something that will result in a statue with him riding a lion. I'm not sure what that entails, but I guess time will tell! Mike then almost got shot by the Royal Guard for sticking his head through the fence (not really but one of them did something with his gun).

We then walked up to Piccadilly Circus, which is I guess like the Times Square of London. We wandered around for awhile, walking through Soho and trying to find a non-gay pub where we could eat some fish and chips. At about seven we stopped at a pub at the edge of Soho, I forget the name, and sat down to eat. We ordered our fish and chips and decided to try some ale with our food. I think it was called Cumberland, and it was pretty good. Right after ordering our food, a British man behind us complained because his fish was “like chewing on an ol' boot”. We got some laughs from this, and when our food came it was delicious.

We weren't sure what to do next, so we started to wander again. We stumbled upon Trafalgar Square and saw a ton of more statues. By then we had seen so many statues that it seemed they were given out by the dozen. This raised Mike's hopes even more for a statue of his own and he now wishes he was born British. We continued to wander and didn't really achieve much else besides tired legs. We didn't want to get back on the train before nine, so we just kept walking. At just before nine, we headed down to Embankment Station to go back to Heathrow. Before getting on the train, a funny thing happened. I decided to take a picture of the train for this blog. A woman inside was startled by the picture and quickly got off the train and walked away. We were confused, but got on the train and waited for it to leave. Then a security guard came down and walked by a few times. We then heard him on his radio saying he was “investigatin' a few blokes who were takin' some photographs”. He continued to walk by and we did our best to look innocent. I have no idea why that would have caused any trouble, but apparently the woman reported us. We managed to leave without being arrested and then sat on the train for an hour back to the airport.

We were hoping that we could go through security and sleep at our gate, thinking that we would be more secure. However, security would not allow us through and we had to find a place to sleep in the terminal. It's a nice airport and pretty big, so it wasn't too hard. We were lucky to find some couches (small, but they did the trick) at a cafe and hunkered down for the night. For some reason, I could only sleep for about three hours and spent most of the night reading and working on this blog. Right now it is almost 4 AM...only three more hours to go. Soon we will be in Rome!