London's Calling

Hey Everyone!

Just got into Florence this afternoon my time at 4:00pm.  I have so much to fill everyone in on!  Let's start at the beginning.  I met a group right away in the Minneapolis airport to fly to Chicago with me which was awesome.  Emily from North Dakota, Brian goes to Bethel, Clara goes to Drake, and Jodine from MSU.  From there we met Liz and Michelle from Chicago.  Everyone is super nice!  We bonded really well which was awesome and having been hanging together since :) I actually ended up rooming with Clara in London which was nice because I already knew her.  Our flight was awesome btw, I have never been on an international flight and it was like royal treatment!  We got dinner at night our own movie/tv screen on the back of every seat where we got to choose what we wanted to watch and our flight was super empty so I got to have my whole own row to myself.  I slept for a while on the flight, but that first day in London was rough.  Mom was right... I should have packed sooner and had a better night's rest... yes, you told me so.  Ugh... why are mom's always right?  ;)  Anyways the time adjustment was tough and we got to London at like 9:30am and couldn't check into our rooms until 3:00pm so we had to leave our luggage in a room and go explore super tired and what not.  We found a cafe right away because we were starving for lunch even though it was breakfast haha.  I had a tomato, mozzarella, avocado, pesto sandwich it was amazing :) mmmmm!  After lunch we decided to walk and visit the British Museum.  It was such a big museum that we didn't get to see everything, but one interesting thing I got to see was Cleopatra's mummy!  After that we took the "tube" or their underground subway system to Piccadilly I believe.  That's where we found more shopping stores.  We went into a six level toy store where you actually get to play with toys before you buy them!  How crazy is that?!  I, of course, played with this mechanical dog for a long time because you could tell it to sit, lie down, beg, and give me a paw.  It was sweet.  The dog also responded to your touch if you pet it and what not.  Then the best part was it SASSED me!  Haha! It immediately reminded me of Jus and Tony's dog Jax who happens to be a big sass :)  I laughed.  After that we went and checked into our hotel, took an hour nap, and went down to Hakuba for a drink on AIFS and welcome.  I had a glass of shiraz and we got the low down on stuff, our tour, and my friends and I planned out the rest of our night.  We were all pretty tired and starving so we decided just to go get dinner at a local pub with wi-fi.  Only problem is… it took FOREVER to find one!  All of them were full and super crowded.  We finally found one and a spot where the seven of us would fit together upstairs.  The wi-fi sucked and our server didn't seem to care for us becausewe were 1. Americans 2. Young Adults 3. Wanted separate checks and 4. Paid with credit cards.  Things to remember if you ever visit London, they don't like separate checks and they don't like the hassle of credit cards.  All seven of us ordered fish and chips though like real Londoners haha.  That should've made our checks some what easier to separate, but what we thought would be a one hour excursion/dinner turned into like a two-three hour fiasco.  After that we were going to stop by the café from breakfast because they had wi-fi, but they also have this rule that you must buy something if you are in the café so finally, me, Liz, and Emily had enough and went to bed crashing at approximately ten pm.  It was wonderful!