It is getting close to departure and we're just starting to pack. We're gonna be there for two weeks so we need a lot of stuff but it's gonna be a pain dragging all that luggage on the train and through the busy city. And Ryan has to pack a bunch of suits and ties since the London office is business attire as opposed to business casual in the states...

We've been in the airport for a couple of hours now and just ate some Chicago hot dogs. This may be our last bite of american meat that we'll have for a couple of weeks! And the hot dogs were so good too, with mustard, onions, tomatoes and topped with my favorite - a pickle. When we checked one of our bags was a little overweight so we did some last minute shuffling to meet the 50 lb. limit. I put a pair a heavy dress shoes in my carry on and put a bunch of sweaters in Mel's bag so we ended up with a 50.0 lb bag and a 48.5 lb bag, whew, better than payin $25. Mel pcked up the Da Vinci Code and I'm trying to finish Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. I read a book every year or two and I'm just about finished this one after starting back in 04. Needless to say I'm not a reader. The flight boards at 7:30pm. Some people waiting at the gate I can tell are Brits and others just look American, then there are a few Asian folks and then us. Its gonna be a looooong flight, I don't have problem sleeping anywhere so I'm sure I could sleep the whole way while Mel reads her book. As long as she wakes me up for meals, its all good.

We just ate dinner on the plane. Mel had Chicken with red pepper sauce and I had lasagna. Not bad at all for an airplane. It came with a salad, cookies, bottle water and a roll. We've been watching a little bit of National Treasure, The Simpsons and listening to the radio. Each seat has a screen on the back so everybody can watch their own screen. They are touch screens where you can watch a movie, TV, listen to the radio, or see a flight map. It's pretty tight. I'm gonna try to get some sleep now to be ready for he next day. My head is still ringing though from when we boarded the plane and I hit my head on the luggage rack. We've been sipping on some drinks to help us to sleep so we both are kinda tipsy. We'll holla tomorrow, sweet dreams!

We're chilling in the apartment after a little bit of walking around and grocery shopping. I think the jet lag really kicked in today. We woke up early Saturday morning, about 3:30am after going to bed around 7pm Friday night. We left the house at 5:00am and returned around midnight from Paris. Then we slept to 15:00 (3:00pm) Sunday afternoon. So today we did some walking around London. The building we're in is in the business district so it is pretty quiet and calm on the weekends. All of the restaurants in the area were closed by the time we left the house. We walked and walked and ran into a lot of tourists. A lot of people had their maps out and a French couple even asked us for directions. We found a Dominoes pizza where we ended up eating lunch and it was pretty good and reasonably priced compared to the $65 chinese dinner we had the first night ( a dinner that would have cost $20 US). We also saw a Burger King a Starbucks every block though most were closed. We saw St. Pauls church and Millennium Bridge before we started to head back.

Paris

The day in Paris was awesome. It was a full day starting from 6:30am where we boarded the Eurostar train and headed for Paris. The seats were setup on the train so that 2 seats would face another 2 seats with fold out tables in the middle. We sat across from a young man from France and a lady from Normandy. The both lived in London and spoke both French and English. Between Speaking with them and the speed of the Eurostar we arrived in Paris in no time. We arrived a little after 8 and began our journey. We met up with our group and boarded the bus. It was a beautiful day in Paris as the sun came through the clouds onto Gare du Nord train station. Melanie noticed how romantic the city was with it tall picturesque apartments. Our first destination was to the ferry ride down the River Seine. We drove through the city and saw some magnificent sights. One of the most beautiful was a large fountain made of gold and black stone. It was a gift from Egypt hundreds of years ago. We also could see the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees and L'arc de Triumph in the distance.

The past week has been a lot of fun as we did a lot of exploring around the city. Now we're just about out of money so we won't be doing to much this week. We're also running low on clothes and we may need to find a laundromat. We used our neighbor's washing/drying machine to do a load but it took almost three hours and he had things to do so we didn't get to wash all of our clothes. Today we took a ride on the London Eye. It's almost like a big ferris wheel but each car is enclosed in glass and fits about 15 people where you can sit or stand. It was a wet, cloudy day and pretty cold. We reserved our tickets online so didn't have to wait long to get on the Eye. Despite the weather we could still see the whole city. It was a pretty amazing view. We saw all of the palaces, monuments, etc. We got to take some good pictures while we were up there. It lasted about half an hour. Afterwards we got some food and headed home.