After buying dad another day pass for the tube, we rode over to Ladbroke Grove to get to Portobello Road for brunch. The restaurant, Electric Diner, serves a French-American menu and wide-ranging breakfast menu starting at 8 am. The venue is actually pretty cool—a barrel-vaulted space with few windows, and booths and a bar at which customers can sit.
Dad and I passed on eating breakfast this morning and instead made our way over to the Marble Arch tube station. I somehow managed to lose my Oyster card from last fall, so I had to buy a new one and dad got a 1-day pass. This might sound silly but it was really exciting to ride the tube again for the first time in almost five months. I was overwhelmed by the number of people pushing past us but it was so easy getting from station to station and I’m sure that I’ll get used to the underground again in no time.
Dad and I had an early breakfast before we headed over to the City of London. A city within London, it constituted most of the early settlement of London from its settlement by the Romans to the Middle Ages. Nowadays, this square-mile area serves as the home for the financial district of London. We met up with co-workers of my father and I got to sit in on a meeting with Zurich Insurance. I even got my own identification pass to be in the building!
When I landed in London this morning, I could feel that these two coming months would be a huge growing experience for me. Living by yourself in a foreign city is a bit scary but I could already imagine myself strutting up and down the streets of London with the ease of someone who lived in the city all of their lives. This fantasy took a bit of a bruising when I walked straight into a glass door while trying to enter my hotel but we’ll just blame that on my lack of sleep in the past 24 hours. I had big plans to spend the entire rest of the morning and afternoon out and about, only to fall asleep for a solid four hours.
Dad and I are staying in a Marriott in Grosvenor Square, which is in the West End of London. The hotel is pretty swanky and I even got to enjoy afternoon tea before I headed out for my adventure. 
I honestly haven’t given much thought to my two month adventure in London in the past week. Not because I’m not excited or because I’m not grateful, but because I was in Myrtle Beach right after exams for Posties and then in Ohio for the USAU National Championships (shout out to Ruckus for placing third in the nation!). So when I drove back home from Winston yesterday, I hadn’t done any packing and was desperately in need of getting my life together. Naturally I did the responsible thing—I went shopping in downtown Charleston. Granted I went to buy things I need for London but because of this my packing process didn’t actual start until around 10 pm last night and I was still shoving things into my bags as we were leaving the house.
Mom drove me to the airport and excitedly waved goodbye as I made my way through security. Luckily, I made it to the gate right before they started boarding so I didn’t have to wait around. I’ve been in the Charlotte Airport for the past three or so hours and I’m proud to say that I’ve only gotten lost once, when I went to concourse C instead of concourse D (if you’re in the airport right now and happen to see a very lost looking blonde girl dressing in ADPi apparel, that’s me!).
