London

Summary

We stopped through London two times.  On the first pass we stopped over for only 7 hours, between Sao Paulo and Cairo to Kenya.  Since London is our only stop in Europe on this trip, we figured we needed to see some sights and get some pictures just to say we were in Europe.  We had both been to London separately, but this was our first time together.

On our second pass through London, between Egypt and India, we decided to spend the night, mostly so that we could buy a special zoom lens for the digital camera.  We had been frustrated by the marginal zoom capabilities of our digital camera, especially on the safaris, but we could not find a zoom lens made for our  camera.  In Cape Town we found a shop that had a magazine specifically about digital cameras.  In it we found a mail order company in London that makes a special lens for our camera.  Unfortunately, they would not ship to a hotel, so we made plans via email to meet one of their sales people while in London.  We arrived in London on a Sunday afternoon and thought that we had the full day in London the next day to get the lens.  Not until the night we arrived in London did we realize that our flight to India on Monday left at 11AM.  With London traffic and the distance between the hotel and the distributor, there was no way we could meet with them before our flight.  There is only one flight a day to India and we did not want to reschedule the train trip in India, so we had to painfully pass on the zoom lens.  The sales guy let us know that if we had known earlier he would have met us on Sunday night!

Getting There

First pass

Our 11 hour overnight flight from Sao Paulo to London was long but pretty easy since it was in first class.  It was the first time they gave us full sleeping clothing to use (instead of sleeping in what we brought on the plane).  We landed at London Gatwick airport, then took the SpeedLink bus to Heathrow, stored our bags, then went into the city via the Underground.  We flew from London to Cairo from Heathrow.

Second Pass

We flew from Cairo to London on British Airways in first class so the flight was very comfortable.  We were quite surprised that they were showing first-run movies in the first class movie rotation.  On the second rotation we watched Traffic.  Unfortunately, because of the timing of movies the flight ended during the movie so we could only watch the first hour of the movie!  Fortunately, we finagled finishing it on the next flight to India (see India-Getting There).

The night before our flight to London we made reservations in the Heathrow Hilton since we were only staying one night, and we already had seen the immediate tourist places in London.  Being able to walk from the baggage claim to the hotel without leaving the airport was very convenient.