And so the adventure begins. . .

Its nice to start off the day rested and clean, after essentially two straight days of running between trains and airport terminals. Some of us were able to get a couple hours of sleep on the flight over, but the flight didn't allow for much rest, and we were all in desperate need of an early night last night.

The process getting here was relatively painless, though not long after Scott, Ryan, and I met up with Rory at JFK and got through security, he managed to lose his passport, nearly forcing him to give up the trip before it had begun. Apparently he had given his passport and boarding pass to someone at a store for some sort of proof, and when he got it back, he only got the boarding pass and didn't realize it till he started walking back to the terminal. The best part is that this happened on the other side of security: he had decided to go back and check out the shops in front of security while we waited at the gate, so we had no idea anything was even wrong. Had he not recovered his passport as quickly as he did, he would not have been able to get back through security and we would have had no idea what happened to him and would have been forced to board the plane without him. Fortunately all went smoothly.

Yesterday, Jon took us on a fairly general tour of some of the city after we meeting up with him at our hostel: The Royal Bayswater Hotel, which is not "Royal," and really not much of a hotel either. Most of the sights were things I had seen on my previous visit, but it was nice to see parliament again, and take in the London atmosphere. We did a lot of walking, making the occasional stop for a pint, and eventually decided it was best to end the night early since everyone besides Jon was beat from all the traveling. This city is even more expensive than I remember, but fortunately the beer is reasonably priced and thickly headed. I'm basically spending twice the daily budget I averaged, but I expected this in London; Things will be much easier on the wallet for the rest of the trip. We ended the evening with a few pints at a Fuller's pub. We sat back for a few hours, had some food, and watched Spain pummel Tunisia in the World Cup. It was a fairly authentic World Cup experience, complete with yelling Spanish football fans, but tonight's game will be more interesting when we get to watch England battle Sweden from a London pub. After we returned to the hostel, there was a moment of panic, as Scott through his hands on his head and realized he had lost his debit card. After 15 minutes of freaking out, Ryan and Jon took Scott downstairs to the internet cafe to look up the phone number of the pub he thought he left it at. Imediately upon exiting the room, they came back in after finding it lying patiently on the floor of the hallway. Two days, and two out of five of us have already nearly lost extremely important things. Hopefully it won't happen again, I suspect other places in out itinerary have the potential to provide many more obstacles for us than London.

Today we are going to the Tower of London, among various other sites. Today should be better than yesterday, with everyone being well rested and more sights that I haven't seen. Tomorrow we fly to Graz, Austria. For me, this will really begin the trip, going to a place that I haven't been, and to a place where people don't all speak fluent English.

I don't know what the hell the other guys are still doing upstairs, but I hope they are ready to go, because I'm tired of sitting down here in front of the computer as lories and double-decker busses pass outside. London awaits.