I arrived at Stansted airport at 11:30 a.m. and immediately had the joy of queuing up to go through immigration. Since the line for those with passports issued outside the UK and European Union was far shorter than that for ones from the UK/EU, I was sure I’d be done in no time. And had there been more than two people taking care of that line, I would have been. Be even so, I didn’t wait too long and was off to find my baggage. Since immigration had taken me nearly 30 minutes, my bag was already through baggage claim and since I had nothing to declare, I was able to jet through customs and find Andrew. He was easy to spot thanks to the sign and since it had been 13 hours since my last cigarette, I dragged him outside for a smoke before catching the train to London.

This point of the trek was oddly surreal. Had I not known better, I would’ve thought we were in Jersey traveling back to New York from Red Bank. Each station we passed looked the same and the scenery was only slightly different.

Arriving to London, we then had to hop on the tube to get to my hotel and check in. The tube is quite interesting. It reminds me a lot of the subway in Manhattan (seeing as how they are both essentially the same thing) except that the tube is much cleaner and doesn’t have as many stops or go nearly as fast. Something that struck me as funny (which Andrew thought was funny that I thought it was funny) is that instead of saying “exit” on the signs out of the tube station, it says “way out.” Maybe I’m just easy to amuse, but I thought it was cute. Checking into the hotel, I discover I have the smallest room ever. Though overall the hotel is great. It’s not scary or nasty, which I was a bit afraid it would be.

Since I had already called my parents and Matt to let them know I had made it in ok, my next thought was to finally shower since I desperately needed to wash the grime of travel off me and get into some clean clothes. Once that was done, we set off to grab dinner. Since Andrew wanted to show me Leicester Square, we took the tube up to there and walked through it before finding a little Italian place for dinner. Afterwards, we went to a pub for drinks before heading back to the hotel. Still exhausted from my flight, I nearly fell asleep on the tube, so we called it an early night so I could catch up on sleep and prepare for sightseeing on Monday.