London

So the plan to have no plan slightly back fired. As I am getting into London all the excitment to see if Sam was on the other side of customs was first halted by the cute customs lady who I thought I could charm my way through. First question, how long are you staying? I don't know. Where are you staying? I don't know. Do you have an Itinerary? No. The look of disgust on her face is something like when your parents say "I am not mad, I am just really dissapointed". So after several other questions she, with pity, stamped my passport and I walked through to a very tired Sam on the other side.

After a big hug and some small talk, we changed some currency and made our way to the city. Sam had the name of a hostel, and we walk of the train and just start walking. Come to find out we were in one of the most expensive parts of London and there we were lugging our backpacks for almost two hours, not finding the hostel, so we finally are about to give up and check into a Holiday Inn but it was over booked. Finally they refer us to a hostel, which we walked past and we checked in.

By about noon, showered up and ready to go we start going to see the sights. We go to buckingham palace and we notice on the national mall there are alternating British and American flags, we find out Obama is coming into town for a state visit( so I go all the way to London to see our president for the first time). So after a few other sites we go to a pub for dinner and begin to make our way back to the Hostel for an afternoon nap. 4 hours later we decide to wake up and try to make a night tour of the city, with success we made it back to the hostel have a few drinks, and hit the sack.

Waking up for breakfast we go to check into the hostel for a 2nd and 3rd night right? False, the hostel is over booked, so once again we lug our huge bags luckily only a 5-10 minute walk down to another hostel where we check in and then make our way back down to Buckingham palace.

Walking down to the palace, there were Police every 100 feet around the perimiter of the Palace walls, for Obama's entrance. After about 30 minutes of waiting the siren's roared, the motor cycles drove up and the caravan passed right in front of us. No more than 10 seconds of being in sight of the caravan was he safely within the limits of the Castle. After a great display of british tax dollars spent to surround our president, it was amazing to see what we think was William and Kate, sneak past almost everyone outside the front gate in their car.

So after day two of here in London, and the Volcano cloud about to be overhead, we are going to move on to France and Normandy in 2 days time for the rest of the week and weekend.

Cherio,
Michael and Sam