We're in ENGLAND!!!

David (left) and Derek (right)

So our first true joint post is direct from the United Kingdom!  We are staying at my (David's) Grandmother's house in Northwood, near London.  We call her Kiki.  We are in a quaint English village, a perfect place to luanch a surprise invation. 

We woke up today with a fantastic English Breakfast.  Most of it you would find in an American breakfast; eggs, bacon, suasage, tomotoes, and mushrooms.  The toast is actually fried toast, grilled in bacon fat rather than heated in a toaster.  And to finish, what could be tastier than a lovely chocolate croissant? 

A real English Breakfast

Un Croissant Chocolat

Today we performed a surveillance mission, exploring the nearby town.  Being the protective type, Kiki took us to a pharmacy and supplied us with diaherrea remedies, just in case.  We also exchanged some currency.  Quick tip; never exchange currency at an airport!  You will get ripped off!  We got a rate of 1.65 USD to the Pound in town, whereas we would have payed about $1.75 per Pound in the airport.  It may not seem like much, but when you exchange a significant amount of money it really is a lot.  And if anyone wants proof that we are truly in England, what could be better than a double-decker bus?

The pleasent village of Northwood

Derek got in the way...

Here's Derek with some drinks we can now legally buy

We had a round of scrabble this afternoon.  I thought that, for the first time in my life, I would defeat Kiki.  Using all 7 tiles and a triple word score, I rocketed ahead.  Despite this I proceeded to draw only vowels for the remainder of the game and lost by a single point.

Tomorrow we have a more exciting trip planned, so stay tuned and don't be discouraged by our quiet first day.  I now hand over the reigns to Derek, for his own input on events.

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England is fantastic! Unlike David, I've never been outside of North America, so this is a cool experience for me. The cars are on the wrong sides of the road, and all the crosswalks are labeled "Zebra Crossing"! (I'm going to keep a running list of strange terms for you all.) We arrived yesterday after a long plane flight to find that we had wasted an entire day on the plane. Even though the flight itself was only 6 hours, we spend 2 hours in security beforehand and a half hour with customs and immigration afterwards. Plus, England is 5 hours ahead of America. So we left the hotel at 5am and arrived at David's grandmother's at 8pm.

As David mentioned earlier, his grandmother is called Kiki. She's a very sweet lady and has done a copious amount of travelling herself - so she has been giving us all sorts of tips for our trips. Also, her cooking rules :D our breakfast was great, and the fried bread was exotic and delicious. It's good that our trip is starting at her house, since we'll use it as sort of a home base to start testing the water in London from.

It's worth mentioning that we didn't actually buy the bottle of wine seen above. The immigration guy who stamped my passport said, after he heard we were from America and in our gap year, "Oh, so you're coming over here to spend 90 days drunk in Europe, are you?" (Add in the British accent in your mind.) I laughed and told him that we wanted to see more of Europe than the floor. XD

That's about it for now. Keep following us - we'll be moving to the Continent in a few days!

<Derek>