FINALLY HERE!!!! - London Day 1/2

At last! After nearly twelve months of planning and months of organizing we are finally here.  Tuesday night was stressful, but after a really late night and a lot of help from our friends we finally had an (almost) empty house.  Must admit for a while there I didn't think we would make the plane.  Thankyou to our wonderful friends and family who helped us so much, especially in the last couple of weeks and particularly Tuesday night (and Wednesday morning) when we were really struggling and running out of time very rapidly.  Without their help we would still be in TP.

Packing up our bags proved quite a feat.    While going through my papers (again)  at 3.30 in the morning I realised that the doctors letters that I had organised so nice and early months ago were now no where to be found, so after frantic searching decided the best thing to do was to ring the docs office from Para airport.  Thank goodness for small towns.   After sorting everything so well (I thought )and packing it all in we realised that something was going to have to go, so after doing a quick cull (having to repack suitcases at 6.30 before meeting a 7am bus not ideal) we thought all was good.  We raced around to meet the boys and then the bus (thanks to Nick and Trace again) and be on our way.  We were off, yeh, only to realise 5km out the road that important papers (including the boys homework for the next 3 months) was left in the backseat of our car, in TP.   After a quick mercy call and thanks to Smithy,(again)  who met us out the road, we now had said homework.  The boys were happy about that.  We arrived at the airport and checked in our now repacked luggage which we thought was all good, we thought we could be a little over  but all good, only to find that the  lady behind the check in counter thought it was 'quite a bit over.' We were sure our scales didn't say that.  So $40 later we were now checked in and waited for our delayed flight.  We held our breath for what the International airport would bring as apparently we were already over our weight and we still had to check into the international flight with a weight limit 12kg less.




At the Perth Airport with everyone

  We were very happy to have Wayne, Tina and the family, and Nan, Sally and Ian come to see us off at the airport.  We checked in our luggage, no problem what so ever, this check in lady didn't even make mention of our slightly rounded cases, and sat and had a catch up and a cuppa with everyone before getting ready to board.   Time to board- still can't believe we are actually going.  Customs and immigration proved not too much of a problem, however we discoved that they are now very thorough and after scanning our backpacks 3 times we were right to board.

 The flight to Kuala Lumpur was fine, and the boys loved the KL airport. 



Kuala Lumpur airport

 Wanted to stay and shop for a while but we dicided it would be better that we check in to our onward flight and perhaps arrive at the airport early on the way home with Nick, Trace and Brandon and shop then.  Checked in to our next leg,  13 hours to Heathrow, only to find there was a strike due to happen at the airport and that there could be substantial delays when arriving to Heathrow.  

The flight was good, the boys and Rog watched movies, and we all tried to catch up on some much needed sleep.  We arrived into Heathrow about an hour early, and proceded through the airport with not a problem at all.  We had cleared through immigration, customs and met our driver all within about half and hour of landing, however we might have been a little lucky as one of the friendly security men at the airport told us that all the flights after us would probably have about a 4 hour queing time to get through.  Glad we had the early flight.
We are now at our unit.  It is nice and clean, but a little on the small side, but hey we are cozy.

Well we have been in London for a day now,  I did infact have a  post ready to go yesterday before it somehow decided to delete itself!  Not happy.   We spent the morning having a bit of a rest and then ventured out for the afternoon just around where we are staying.  We had our first meal at the local pub just down the street, only to be served by an Aussie, and obviously frequented by a lot other fellow Aussie travellers.  (They must have arrived after us, they still had their bags with them).   The boys enjoyed their meal, as you can see.

Boys enjoying their first British meal

 We then ventured out to find a few supplies and check out our surrounds.  Bought a few things for brekky, and supplies to go on with.  The fruit from the street market sellers was so cheap.  We bought a "scoop" which is like a metal salad bowl each  of bananas, mandarins, mangos, berries and cherries and it cost us 5 pounds all up,  about $8!   Returned with our supplies to the unit and I crashed.  Literally.  I thought I would lie dow for a few minutes and have now woken up 12 hours later.  Anyway today we plan to head out and about.  We hope to go on an open top bus and go exploring further.  We will take it a bit easy today and see what it brings.  Haven't managed to find a phone store that we thought we could change our phones at but will endeavour to do that today.  So thats it for now, will post phone contact and todays adventures soon.