Arriving In London!

After a very long and exhausting flight I am finally in London. I left home at around 5 am on Wednesday morning and proceeded to head to Logan airport. Having not been a fan of flying, the entire process was a very stressful one. Once my friend Mariah and I had boarded the plane we were delivered the unfortunate news that maintenance was being done and the wheel and breaks of the plane had to be replaced. Our scheduled 8:55 takeoff ended up getting bumped to around 10:00 am but once we were in the air I began to feel much more at ease. The flight itself went pretty smoothly, but unfortunately upon arriving at Heathrow there was a lot of traffic so the plane had to circle the area for about 25 minutes. Once I was finally on the ground, Mariah and I went to collect our bags and to meet the driver that took us to the place where our apartment keys were held. It felt surreal being in the city, and it was almost hard to believe that I was finally in London.  While driving to the apartment I could see the London eye in the distance and it was an amazing sight to see.  Once we had our keys we proceeded to our apartment and to our surprise we were the first ones to arrive. The entire apartment was MUCH bigger that I expected it would be and included a living room area, kitchen, and four 2-person bedrooms with a ton of space. Arriving to the apartment first has its perks as we choose one of the biggest rooms with a bathroom included.  Once we had settled in we decided to experience some fine English dining at Burger King because it was the closest place to the apartment.  After a long exhausting day  I finally went to bed at 3 am (10 pm East coast time) and could not wait for what was to come in the next few days.

The next morning after a couple new roommates move in, a few of us decided to walk around the area of our apartment. There are various different shops all over the place and it reminded me a lot of New York City. After walking around for a bit we decided to look in a clothing store called Marks and Spencer. After browsing for a couple minutes I noticed that in the back of store they had a grocery area. Since we needed food for the apartment we figured we would purchase a few things, although it felt odd being a store where people had fruit, bread, jeans, and blouses all in one basket. One thing that I was not expecting when coming to the UK was the fact that they charge you to use shopping carts in some grocery stores, and they also charge you for the plastic bags when you check out! Since it cost money to use carts we just decided to fill our baskets as much as possible, which after a while became difficult to carry. Most of the foods were similar to American brands with some name changes, popsicles are called “lollies” and certain types of cereal are called “shreddies”. It was also cool to see British celebrities on the cover of the tabloid magazines at the check -out counter; I bought one with singer Cheryl Cole on the cover.

 

Area around the apartment

View from the window of my room

After we came back to the apartment we decided to make dinner, well my roommate made dinner and I helped with the cutting of the vegetables since I have zero cooking ability whatsoever. Our first dinner in the apartment consisted of steak and peppers with potatoes and carrots.

I’m still getting familiar with my surroundings and it is really still hard to believe that I am actually in London but I can’t wait to do more exploring in the next couple days!