Wednesday, February 11, 2009

We flew to London departing Boston 9:00AM EST. We had an uneventful, empty flight with breakfast and snack. Many of us were able to stretch out over a couple of seats and sleep. We arrived at London Heathrow, around 9PM GMT, there was a slight delay from the scheduled arrival time, but no biggie.



Our large group gathered our luggage and took a ride on the Underground, aka The Tube to our first hostel, The Globetrotter Inn, London.


The kids were amazing! For some of them, this was a first ride on an airplane. Nothing like a short first flight. ;-) The flight attendants said this group was one of the best behaved school groups they've ever encountered. With good reason, we've got great kids!

They were toting their own luggage, including up stairs at the Tube station. Little did we know how many stairs we would be carrying those bags on! Packing light is a good thing and I'm so glad DD and I brought exactly what we needed and nothing more! Thank goodness for travel towels, we discovered they save a lot of space and do their job well.

DD and I roomed with MB, TG/JG and LJ for 2 nights. This hostel is definitely geared towards college-aged travellers. Although it was non-smoking, it had a strong smoky smell throughout, especially the lobby. No money changed hands there, it was all done by charging your room card with a machine in the lobby. Even if you wanted to buy postage stamps, or an hours worth of www service for a pound-fifty. While I get the reasons why they do things this way, it felt inconvenient.

The showers were very hot with great water pressure. Having a well at home, this was appreciated.

Because we had meals on the plane we pretty much got settled into our rooms and went straight to bed. It was already a long day having to be at Logan at 6AM that morning and we knew we'd be super busy the rest of the week!

LJ is DD's best friend, and was traveling without a parent. We had three children in the group traveling without a parent (2 were siblings) and LJ was under my care for the week. She is truly a dear and I am so thankful her parents were willing to send her. I will be mentioning her frequently during the report.