We left Pittsburgh late Sunday night on a relatively new direct flight to London (Heathrow) Airport. We arrived about 10am or so and made it through passport control/customs relatively quickly.
We met our tour manager, David, and Jan at the airport. From then we boarded a nice bus and headed into central London.
We made a quick stop to pickup our London tour guide (also Jan!) and she explained some of the sites we were seeing.
We had a brief stop at Buckingham Palace and then continued on to the Tower of London. We had a lunch break and then we spent some time at the Tower.
I have only vague memories of the Tower from the visit with my parents in middle school. I DO remember waiting two hours in a line to see the torture chamber. We walked right in this time. It was super disappointing after the two hour wait in 7th grade and that room was not much better this time —but at least we walked right in! The Crown Jewels were amazing and so were the suits of armor.
There were also several characters walking around the grounds that were fun to interact with and the dry sense of humor of the Beefeater guides was really enjoyable even in my jet lagged-exhaustion.
Checked into our cute hotel, St. Giles, and then we were off for our first official fish & chips dinner (yum!).
It was a very long day but a good start to our trip.