I've wanted to see London for as long as I can remember. Chris has been here before, but somehow I never had the chance. So when I realized we could route our flight through London with an extended layover, I grabbed the opportunity. Eighteen hours in London. Not enough to see everything, but finally enough to see something.

We landed at Heathrow just before midnight, stumbled into our hotel near Terminal 4, and grabbed a few hours of sleep before our 5:30 a.m. wake-up. Five hours isn't much, but the excitement carried me. I kept thinking: I'm finally going to see London!

By the time we stepped out of the Underground at Tottenham Court Road, the city was already buzzing. Double-decker buses everywhere - it felt like stepping into a movie I'd watched a hundred times.

Our first stop was Trafalgar Square. I'd seen photos, of course, but standing there in front of it - it was bigger than I expected. And then, in the middle of looking up at the statue, I turned my head and saw Big Ben. Right there. Just casually existing in the corner of my vision like it wasn't one of the most iconic landmarks on the planet.

But as we were walking towards it, we stumbled across Banksy's newest installation - a political statement dropped into Waterloo Square just weeks earlier. Total luck.

From there, we made our way toward Buckingham Palace, weaving through crowds and road closures. Apparently, we picked the exact day Parliament was opening, which meant King Charles was inside the palace and the entire area was blocked off. Our original route to Westminster Abbey was cordoned off. Every turn we took led to another barricade. It was chaotic, and confusing. Classic travels with Chris and Emilie where we forget to look up such things.

But the detours led us somewhere even better: straight to Big Ben and the Thames. From there we continued to see more famous landmarks: the London Eye, the red telephone booths, the skyline stretching along the river.

We kept walking along the Thames to St. Paul's Cathedral. Then the Millennium Bridge - the one I've weirdly been excited about crossing. On the other side of the bridge sat Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre, with the Shard in the distance.

We continued our walk through the Bankside area to Borough Market, filled with foods like Scotch eggs, chicken pasties, and Turkish coffee with halva. Then the rain and hail arrived as we crossed London Bridge. We tucked into a coffee shop and waited for it to subside.

Our final stop was the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The sky cleared again, and we had blue skies over this iconic landmark.

And then, it was time to get back to Heathrow. We made it through security with time to spare, only to find out our flight was delayed. London weather doing its thing again. Eventually, we took off two and a half hours late, flying over the icy mountains of Greenland to our next destination.

Eighteen hours. A handful of detours. A lot of landmarks. And my first look at London.