The Hazzards of International Flights, Big Ben, & Westminster Abbey | London, England

Hello everyone!! In my last post I promised to write about my trip to London. Well...better late than never lol. The blogging bug has bitten me again so here we go!

During the summer of 2014 my best friend and I took a two week trip to London. If you don't know this about me already, I'm a big planner. So naturally I researched all of our flight options from OKC to London and chose the option that I thought would work out best. However, it did not work out the way I planned....at all.

View of London from the plane.

We were supposed to leave the OKC airport extremely early, change planes in Chicago, and arrive in London late at night so we could immediately go to sleep after we checked in and adjust our inner clocks to London time while we slept. Sounds like an ideal scenario right? But that isn't how it worked out lol.

What actually happened was we left OKC extremely early (after my sweet younger brother drove us to the airport through a torrential thunderstorm causing us to nearly miss our flight), but when we arrived in Chicago the plane we were switching to couldn't take off because of a mechanical issue. We ended up being stranded in the Chicago airport for 8 hours plus an extra hour on the tarmac (someone decided they didn't want to go on the flight after all. I mean honestly, you couldn't have made that decision during the 8 hours you were sitting in the airport?).

On the bright side, the airplane food wasn't that bad, the airline didn't loose our luggage, and the Heathrow Express train from the airport to London was quick and easy to navigate. However, because of our delay we had to navigate the Tube during morning rush hour, with suitcases, and my Travelcard wouldn't work at the Tube ticket gate. So that was a learning experience.

My advice is NEVER ARRIVE IN LONDON DURING RUSH HOUR ON THE TUBE WITH SUITCASES!!!! I can't emphasize this enough. Save yourself the trouble and get a different flight, hang out in an airport cafe, pretty much anything to wait until after rush hour.

After we survived the Tube, we checked into our accommodations (we stayed in a dorm room at the University of Westminister; more about this in a later post), took a three hour power nap, unpacked, and got ready to see the sights. We went exploring and saw Westminister Abby, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament. Also, we accidentally stumbled upon the Prime Minister's House and the Whitehall Gardens while we were searching for a dinner spot.

Even though our trip began in an unexpected way, thankfully it didn't set the tone for the entire trip :)