London Madness

London Heathrow Airport  We arrived at London Heathrow Airport at 11:00 a.m.  The flight was on-time, but it was a long flight and I hardly slept.   I expected LHR to be an old airport, but to my surprise, it was very old.  The customs hall looked 70s-ish.  While I was in line, I overheard someone getting yelled at by a custom official, "Why did you come back now and not earlier?".  That was freaky.  Then I thought, I'm only visiting, they shouldn't give me a hard time and they didn't.  We went to get our luggage and they were super heavy (why did we bring so much stuff!?!?)

Update:  THE NEW TERMINALS ARE FANTASTIC.

Underground Experience  To save some $$$$, we decided to take the Underground to the hotel instead of the Heathrow Express.  Maybe it was a bad idea because it took us over an hour (the Express would take only 15 minutes but would cost 3.5 times more)  and we went up and down a lot of stairs with our luggage.  We didn't know there would be so many stairs!!!  I guess people looked at us and thought, oh tourists!  Fortunately, a couple saw us and helped us to carry the luggage up the stairs.  Wherever they are now, THANK YOU.  We got to Paddington Station around 1-ish and walked over to the hotel that was 2 blocks away.

Arriving at St. David's Hotels  By the time we got to the hotel (it's more of a B&B), we were sooooo exhausted.  And guess what, more stairs up to the hotel reception!?!  But thank god, the hotel staff saw us trying to drag our stuff up, they immediately came out to help.  We received a warm welcome and checked in, finally. 

Taking it Easy on the First Day  Since we were so tired, we decided to stay put in the area.  We just walked around and stopped by Tesco to stock up some water and snacks.  Tesco is our Safeway equivalent, and we immediately knew this would be the store we would go often during our trip.  Tesco is less expensive than Marks & Spencers so that's a plus.  As for dinner, we went for Italian as recommended by the hotel.  The restaurant was only a block away.  We ordered a pasta and a pizza.  Food was good and we both thought that the dishes here were less buttery/creamy than those in the States.