I originally wrote up one enormous blog post for our entire stay in London. However I found that it was far too long and that I was leaving things out to try to keep it to a manageable length, so instead I’m doing an installment for each day. Here’s day one!
In the Seattle airport we were scrambling to figure out where we were sleeping on the first night of our grand adventure. You see, we had a host who fell through on us, which left us trying to figure out what we were going to do. So we searched hostels (really expensive in London), sent out a few desperate couch requests, finally we headed to priceline where we named our own price at increasing intervals until we were about $5 more than the cost of a hostel (our limit was $10 over the hostel). We ended up with a 
room at the Hyde Park Hilton London… not bad. Moments after reserving our room for the next night we boarded a 747 that took off and headed northeast through northern Canada, over a bit of Greenland and just south of Iceland on its way south to London. We had some amazing views of jagged peaks, frozen tundra, ice floes, glaciers and sunrise over the clouds. Sadly the window was pretty scratched and dirty so we didn’t get many photos.
We landed at 6:30am, made our way through the massive Heathrow airport, asked a nice lady at tourist information how to get to the Hyde Park Hilton, were told to get off at Hyde Park Corner on the Picadilly line of the tube (their subway system). So we did that, followed signs to the Hilton, realized it was the Park Lane Hilton, asked the concierge for directions, were told it would be easy to hop on a bus that would take us around the (massive) park since it was on the opposite corner. We asked how long it would be to walk since walking through Hyde Park was something we wanted to do anyhow. He said 30 to 45 minutes. We decided that would be a nice morning activity and a good way to stave off jet lag, which looking back on it may have been in full force. So we set off to walk through the park.
We looked at a map of the park, picked out our route on a nice diagonal path that would take us straight through the park. That went straight out the window owing to the rather large festival that had been set up in the middle of the park. It was empty at the time, but still no access for the public, so we made our way down the two legs of the triangle instead. It was a nice walk, we saw locals out riding horses, walking their dogs, jogging, 
cycling to work and ignoring the tourists wandering around looking at maps. Eventually we made it to our hotel and upon explaining how we had been sent to the wrong Hilton were told we were far from the first to have that issue and offered a washroom to refresh ourselves. They then stored our bags for us since our room wasn’t ready yet (it was a long time before checkout so that was fine). I chatted with the concierge while Sarah freshened up and got tips on what tube lines to take for what we wanted to do.
Next it was off on the central line to St Paul’s cathedral. This is the 4th largest church in Europe, seriously large, and also quite huge. I recalled when we read the name that the “whispering gallery” is somewhat famous. It’s a dome where you can whisper into the 
wall and someone standing across the room can hear you if their ear is pressed to the wall, pretty neat. There are also tons of monuments, famous people graves, stained glass and other artwork, a monument to the US soldiers who died defending the UK in WWII, a café, a gift shop and more. The designer of the building left the walls and ceilings mostly undecorated as he felt that helped visitors get closer to god. Queen Victoria at some point commented that it was rather drab and now the front part of the cathedral is covered in mosaics, gilding and other decoration.
After we had thoroughly explored St. Paul’s we walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern where we saw some cool art and had a coffee to try to stave off jet lag induced sleep a bit longer. The museum was really neat, and the building itself is rather cool looking. If you’ve seen modern art you can imagine what was on display inside. Some really cool things, but also the obligatory white canvases and scribbles.
We left the museum and wandered up the South Bank (of the Thames) where we passed 
London Bridge, a whole bunch of food trucks, the London Eye 
(big ferris wheel) and cool looking things. We stopped on Westminster bridge to stare at Parliament for a while, and then headed back to the hotel where we planned out the next day and crashed for the night.
In the dark of the night I was awoken by a rather obnoxious beeping. I stumbled out of bed and started checking all our devices hoping to find the offending bit of electronics and therefore relief from the hateful noise. I had no luck and eventually checked out in the hallway, still nothing. The noise seemed to be growing louder and eventually Sarah sat up in bed and informed me that it was a fire alarm. Ah, that made sense… I grabbed a room key and we headed downstairs and out the doors. It was about 11:30 and lots of peole who had been out for the evening as well as other hotel guests were still dressed, so we stood out a bit in our pajamas. We weren’t quite the worse dressed though as several people were in bath robes. The firemen came and cleared the building and we were allowed to go back to bed. Neither of us set an alarm, figuring that our screwy sleep cycles would have us up too early anyhow.