Our day begins with a quick goodbye to our host Sarah - she has to make a dash for something work related, so we have some cereal and head out for downtown where we'll meet Mariah and then do some exploring in one of the most visited cities of the world.

One of the things I love about cities like London is that you never know what you'll discover around each corner. Street performers include an amazing Charlie Chaplain imitation, a fabulous juggler/acrobat, and a guy that does the limbada at about one foot (kinda crazy, eh?). Plus myriads of creative little shops. I highly recommend backpacking to all the dad's out there as it gives you one more reason NOT to shop as much: "you'll have to carry that stuff!". It's awesome. Just the same, the funniest find of the day is a corkscrew shaped like a little man, with the screw coming right out of…well, you know. I thought it would be something Nic would really like.

My favorite find of the day was when we stumbled into an unmarked church, that looked more like a regular building (if London has any such thing). Inside was a choral/musical group practicing. We sat in the pews for about 15 minutes, privy to something quite extraordinarily beautiful. I thought to myself a few times, "this is a practice??" We later discovered the same group was performing that night at about 35 pounds a pop. And we got a free show, nice!

Other sites included the most visited museum in the world - the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, and the National Gallery featuring 1,000's of paintings from renown artists like Van Gogh and Rembrandt. You know, just the ordinary stuff: mummies, renaissance art, palace guards and the like J.

If you haven't yet, check out the youtube video of the guy playing violin in the metro in Washington (I'll post it when I have internet). We played it in church a few weeks ago, with the main point being that you should stop and see what's around you, smell the roses, don't miss anything. With that in mind, we stopped every time a performer showed off his stuff, and noted that very few other people did, in spite of the expertise of the performers. My favorite was a middle-aged "business-looking" fellow playing the harp deep in the underground metro. He was playing the theme from Titanic and it was beautiful and stirring. We were the only ones that stopped. I thought to myself, "these people would probably pay 35 pounds right now to see him in concert, yet they haven't got five minutes for a free show right now?".

All in all, a good day but a long one. We finally arrive at Heathrow at 2am for a quick 3 ½ hour sleep before heading into Terminal five at 6:30am.