For the most part this day was pretty much consumed with travel. Andrew took us into Kiev, but he had to make several stops before we arrived at the airport so left Camp around 8. We had a very crazy check in as we were told at the ticket desk that our plan was fixing to load and so we encountered a few minutes of craziness! I am not a fan of being so rushed, having to try to find a line that will let you cut in, etc. ESPECIALLY when you speak a different language! Larry found a lady that spoke a little English, he tried to explain our dilemma and she let us cut! Whew. Got to our gate and loaded on a bus to drive is out to our plane. Whew. This was one airport I didn't want to spend a lot of extra time in. As I mentioned in the first day, it was just unsettling. This section of the terminal was cleaner and we saw fewer less Military presence...I guess they aren't as concerned if you are LEAVING the Ukraine as coming in! :)
When we got in our seats, we both took a huge deep breath and kind of melted into our seats. We were weary! Larry slept but I don't do well sleeping on a plane, but it was nice to just sit! We had one student, Jess, who was traveling with us back to London where she was to catch a connecting flight to Chicago. Once we landed, we were going to make sure she found her next flight, etc. but British Airways is so nice and they were standing there waiting to take her and other passengers to their next flight! So nice! So we said our goodbyes and walked away, looked at each other and just smiled...our vacation was about to begin!
We went through customs...which took a while but gave us a chance to get our game plan of what to do once we were free! We got our luggage, got us some "pounds" and our Oyster Card (Travel card for tube and bus that we HIGHLY recommend!) and we were off!!!
Took the tube into London and though we had a few moments of trying to figure out the tube...which turned out to be a problem only because the line we needed was having issues...but we recovered quickly and we were at our stop before we knew it. When we got to the street, we both just smiled! Lovely area. Busy but lovely! Larry had studied Google Street View SO much before we left Abilene that he felt like "he had been there before" so he quickly got his bearings and lead us right to the door of Barclay House (Bed and Breakfast). It was lovely and such a perfect little spot! We checked in with the housekeeper who showed us around and answered lots of questions. Very nice lady. We dumped our luggage and set out to find us some dinner. We hadn't eaten much that day because we were going to get us a good lunch at the airport in Kiev but with all the craziness at check-in we had no time. It was such a lovely evening so we walked one short block and came across so many cute little cafes that we had a hard time picking one! We enjoyed sitting outside, taking in all the sights and sounds of London and eating something someone else cooked! :) Then we walked around the area a bit, found a really fun cute little grocery store (Mark and Spencer's) very near our B&B and got us a few snacks for the room before returning to our room. It was probably close to 10 before we got into our room and we tried our best to settle in a bit before falling into a very comfy bed! We called both of our kids and it was SO good to hear their voices before we crashed!
This is the street where we lived for a week! Hard to describe how fun it was at the end of each day to go back to a residential area, grabbed some snacks and go sit on the balcony for a bit and unwind!
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