Day 1

So my first interaction with a Brit obviously was the customs officer. He asked the standard questions about the purpose of the trip and then he goes to stamp my passport and I let out a delighted high pitched squeaky "yaaay!!" And laughed because I knew I was being a complete dork. The guy laughed at me and said to his coworker "Americans are always so jolly when they get stamped," the other customs officer agreed that it is indeed only Americans that get excited. Jaz, Kenyetta and I were all laughing because its true. I told him the world would be a happier place if we all got stickers and stamps all the time. Which is 100% true. Lol.

When we finally get out of the airport we were SOOO ready to experience London and all its dreary drizzly weather goodness. This chic (me) left her coat in the very warm San Antonio house but thankfully Gerald had multiple coats and let me borrow one for the whole trip. So we leave our stuff at the Travelodge and ask the lady at the hotel desk how to get to the bus so we can get to the tube. I swear she says something along the lines of "You're gonna go right then left then at the petr' zebra crossing take a right through the street and the bus is there" Lol or at least that is what I heard. Lauren asked for her to repeat herself and..um...I still didn't get it but I assumed someone did. The lady did realize that we didn't understand Petr' and clarified  gas station (petrol) and on our way out we asked for an extra comforter to be put in the room for us. The pure shock and confusion on her face was funny and we said blanket to clarify. Apparently comforter in England literally means a person to comfort you and she was confused as to why we needed that in our room and why we'd expect the hotel to provide it. Lmbo. It was crazy the language barrier when we all were speaking English.

So when we got outside we realized that no one understood her directions but no one wanted to ask her to clarify a third time. Politeness will be our downfall it seems Lol. So we tried to piece bits of info together and we did get to our bus rather quickly without getting lost. Btw we were basically right next door to the gas station and the "zebra crossing" was the cross walk that led us to an alley that we walked up to get to the main street. The bus was this short red double decker bus. I couldn't look out the window for the first few rides because between the extremely narrow roads and everyone driving on the left side of the road instead of the right I would always misjudge vehicle travel direction and felt like I was gonna get hit.

Then we get to the tube station and it was similar to the metro or subway which I usually enjoy. The best part as I mentioned before was the "please mind the gap" phrase on repeat. By the end of the trip Jaz and I both wanted random souvenirs that had the phrase...however due to our chronic frugality we ended up deciding we didn't need to buy something to remind us of that hilarious phrase in that delightful accent.

So when we go off the tube we were on the extremely beautiful Regeant St. I mean gorgeous. I love architecture. Everything was so much different than anything I see in the states and I had to take pictures of everything everywhere. I mean simple shops looked that much more fancy and special because the building it was in was superb. We stopped at this lounge called Strawberry Moon. I think. It was nice and small and cheap but good quality food and drinks. Great mix of music. We sat in a reserved seating area because there were no tables and "Tanya" who had reserved the tables wasn't there. I know that's terrible. Bad Americans! But to our defense, a British party of 4 or 5 had the same idea and they were in the reserved area with us. Good times.

And. They. Had. WiFi. Praise Jesus.

Seriously. It is so difficult to be without the convenience of the data plan. Since it is incredibly expensive to use it in other countries if you don't have an international plan we all were without and only could use our phones where WiFi was available. I won't lie there were moments during the trip when we weren't talking to each other because we had to update social media. But we had to take advantage of WiFi when we had it. Sad but true. I'll admit it.

Afterwards, we continued walking up and down Regeant St. 

It was still drizzling but well worth every second soaking up the London experience. The red superman telephone booths and our overall tomfoolery made the day end in a positive.

And we managed to make it back to the hotel without getting lost. I'd definitely call it a good day.