The Kiwi plane has landed...

United Kingdom, day 1…what have we done! After what seemed to be a fairly long flight (more than last time) we landed at Heathrow. We proceeded to the customs checkpoint (Border Office) and it was 7 stanchion rows deep with people, each row was about 40 yards longs. About a third of the way through the queue a Home Office worker came out and announced “If you have a visa or right of residence please follow me.” That meant us….uh oh. We squeezed out of the queue, tons of weary people staring at us, and dragged our jet lagged rears to the worker’s window. There was no line at the window. The Home Office worker said, “That line is for non visas, you’re residents so come through here next time…it’s faster.” Sweet! Three minutes later we were through the door and out into the madness of the airport. We made our way through a crowded airport and boarded the Heathrow Express with our 6 bags. A 15 minute rail ride later and we were at Paddinton station. From there it was a quick cab ride from Paddington station to our hotel; we were fortunately allowed to check in 3 hours early. For a European hotel room it was large. Luckily, shops are open on Christmas Eve so we made our way to O2 (cell phone provider) and HSBC to activate my debit card and pay and go cell SIM. We napped too long afterwards and prepared in a rush to go over to the Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park Corner. However, in my haste I plugged our voltage unrestricted hair dryer into the 220 volt outlet. The hair dryer started taking off to Mars and then about six seconds there was a “pop!” from the outlet and the light went out in the room. Awesome. There was no fuse box in the room and with engineering out on holiday we had to change rooms. After schlepping our bags to the next room we set out for Hyde Park. Our hotel is a block north of Hyde Park therefore it is easy to pop into the park. Winter Wonderland is basically a German style theme park, but very loosely German. I think what makes it German is the “German” village which charges about £6.50 for a sandwich. It was nice and chilly out. Oh, there was a 2-man band in the German village. When they played the Macarena, the crowd went nuts. A weird German beef sandwich later for Beckie and bratwurst for me and it was midnight. We got back to our hotel room only to realize our clocks were an hour fast…huh. So we watched Gremlins on TV, the perfect Christmas Eve movie.