London, England

The annals continue on the flight to Heathrow, mentioning very trivial stuff like the food. It is now June 6th, D-day, and when our travellers awake, they find themselves over Iceland and dense cloud cover. From the Journal:

...The final hour of the flight was over the UK and under the clouds; It was beautiful, heather in Scotland*, and grass in England.

We landed at 6:30pm in Heathrow, the interior dingy compared with the lush grass growing near by the runway. Customs was quite happy letting us through,** but we got sharked on tickets from Heathrow to London, by way of the Paddington Express: £54 for two return tickets† instead of something like £6 for one return ticket.

From the impressive but faded Paddington Station, Dad and I walked south to Hyde Park and the adjoining Kensington Gardens. These charming parks†† are similar to Central Park in New York City but less planned and smaller. After walking several miles, we grew tired and started looking for food, settling eventually on a small Greek restaurant, (family run from the looks) and ate some excellent Hummus with hot Pita, the Best Hummus I've ever tasted, along with something called Moussaka, which was quite good too. The first time I ate Greek was in New York's Grand Central Terminal, so it is strongly associated with travel in my mind.

After this, we took the Express back to Heathrow where we waited out the night, me not sleeping a wink.

(On the facing page are two sketches and a map. The sketches are of Paddington Station and Kensington Gardens, and the map shows the route taken.)

*Editor's note: Heather not being in bloom in this season, it is presumably that the chronicler's inexperienced eye considered the purple-brown hue of the hills to be heather because of their location in Scotland. Real heather blooms sometime in the Spring, and is dead by the Summer.

†Editor's note: Tickets in Europe are either Single or Return, equating to One-Way and Round-Trip, but making more sense. Who ever had a round trip?

**Writer's note: This was to give me a bad habit that would almost have serious consequences later on...

††Writer's note: Garden refers to the more planned and groomed manner of Kensington, not any particular garden. It makes sense with the English meaning of garden, which is what they call the backyard.