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Another wonderful breakfast at the hotel followed by some souvenir shopping.  I then returned to the hotel to make sure I was all packed so we could meet our travel companions at the train station.  The train ride to the airport was uneventful and the scenery was beautiful.

At the airport we started at the British Airways check-in.  It truly amazes me how people waiting in a queue are never prepared when they get to the front of the line.  It took a bit of time, but finally bags checked and off to Passport Control and then security.  Passport control had very long lines and then one of our party realized that there was a non-European line that had no one in it.  So we made it through fairly quickly.  Security was fairly speedy and then we went to the British Airways lounge.  The people we are traveling with are flying business class so they have access to the lounge and they can take in a guest.  The lounge has free drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic and a variety of snacks.  It also has free internet but we only had about 30 minutes to wait so I didn’t bother.  Everyone else was in a frenzy to check work email but I figured why bother – most of it would require more response than the 30 minutes I had and I didn’t want to be thinking about email for the whole flight.  They announced our flight in the lounge and we made our way to the gate.

The flight was pretty typical – about an hour and a half with beverage and cold lunch service.  They offered chicken and cheese or cheese sandwiches.  I had the chicken with cheese and a diet coke.  It was decent for airline food. They also hand out entry cards for people that are not UK citizens that are landing in the UK and not flying on to another destination.  The card asks for your name, address, phone number and your address while you are in the UK. 

Once we landed, the 3 people we were traveling with hired a car to take them to the office and my co-worker and I got on the Heathrow Express.  This is a train that takes you from the airport to Paddington Station. The picture of me above is in Paddington Station.

We caught the tube at Paddington to the Victoria station where we walked out of the tube station and looked like typical Americans with no clue where to go.  We started walking and then ended up asking a policeman which way to go.  Neither of us had thought to look up the specific directions from the tube station the hotel.

We arrived at the Park Plaza Victoria hotel and checked in.  I was able to add a night instead of having to change to the Park Plaza Riverbank on Saturday.  I got to my room and logged in to check my email and found 57 mails waiting for me.  As I was working on them, my co-worker called to say he was going into the office and wanted to know if I wanted to join.  I decided not to go and just work for a while from my hotel room.  The next think I new it was 19:45 and I realized I was hungry.  I also wanted to get some diet coke so I didn’t have to pay £2 (approximately $4) from the mini-bar.

I grabbed my purse and went walking to find the store and found one about 2 blocks away.  On the way I had seen a Asian restaurant and decided I would go there for dinner after I had bought the DC.  The restaurant is called dim t and they serve dim sum and a variety of Asian dishes.  I had gyoza and Japanese fried rice which is basically chicken fried rice with teriyaki sauce.  It was very good and I returned to my room with a 12-pack of DC and spent about 2 hours trying to figure out what I wanted to do on Saturday.  Then I went to bed.