The journey from New York to London wasn’t super long, but wasn’t super comfortable either.  Neither of us slept and Zach celebrated our arrival by beginning to throw up repeatedly about an hour before landing.  After we landed, we conveniently found out that our second (because our original had already canceled) Couchsurfing host had to cancel on us!  Great.  So off to a hostel we went, navigating several confusing forms of public transit, Zach dragging all the way.  Thankfully he perked up once we arrived at Restup Hostel UK but we couldn’t check in until 3pm so we stowed our stuff and started walking.  Fortuitous, because as soon as we found some WiFi we had another host offer from someone we met through this very blog!  Hooray!  Now we just had to kill the next 10 hours before we could show up at Tom’s house.

Luckily Zach made a miraculous recovery and we were able to enjoy a great walking day along the Thames River, taking in the skyline, a glimpse of the London Eye, the Old Globe…

Sorry for the iPhone pics, we forgot the camera

(very exciting for me, as a former theater nerd)

the London Bridge,

(very unimpressive considering we’ve seen the original London Bridge where it now stands in Lake Havasu City, AZ.  It’s true.)

a classic British pub with warm and flat cask ale,

Taylor Walker Pub On Thames

the amazing Borough Market which we just stumbled upon,

and the Tower Bridge with a view of the Tower of London.

After all this rambling, we got to meet up with our wonderful hosts in Earlsfield, southwest London, for some awesome hard ciders and conversation at their local pub.  They are moving to Colombia soon and that’s why they had been reading our old blog entries.  Although not official Couchsurfers, they definitely had the spirit, and hopefully we were good enough guests to convert them!

Phew, what an exhausting but awesome first day!