“Or you think I exchanged enough money?” Katie asked, adjusting the shoulder straps on her backpack.

The four friends stood on the platform with their luggage gathered around their feet. They were waiting for the next underground train to arrive.

“I don’t know,” Katie continued. “A hundred dollars doesn’t look like much when it’s turned into pounds. And their money is so weird-looking! It looks like play money.”

“Katie,” Tracy said softly, leaning closer and making sure the crowd of local people standing around them couldn’t hear, “I think it’s obvious enough that we’re tourists without announcing to all these people how much money we have on us and that we think their money looks weird.”

Katie’s straight red hair swished as she glanced around. checking out the audience Tracy seemed so concerned about. Quickly changing the subject and lowering her voice just a smidgen, Katie asked. “Are you sure we know which train to take?”

Doug patted the folded map in the pocket of his jacket. “I got us this far, didn’t I? I think I can find the hotel. Did you guys keep your tube passes handy? We’ll need to run them through the machine again when we leave the station.”

“This reminds me of the BART trains in San Francisco.” Tracy said softly. “Except those are above ground. Have you guys ever been on BART?”

None of them had.

“This system is slightly older,” Doug said. “Did you see in that one tour book that they used to run steam engine trains down here more than a hundred years ago?”

Christy looked up at the rounded ceiling and then at the many large billboard posters scattered across the brick walls of the underground tunnel. She couldn’t imagine people and trains being in this same tunnel a hundred years ago.

“Isn’t it freaky, you guys,” Katie said, “to think that there’s a city above us? I don’t feel like we’re in London yet. Maybe I will when I see one of those red double-decker buses.”

Just then a loud rush of air sounded through the dark passageway. A moment later the underground train came to a halt. Before Christy had time to situate her suitcase so she could wheel it onto the train, people began to push toward the open door. Her luggage, with a pop-up handle and wheels, had been a present from her wealthy Aunt Marti.

“Can you get it?” Doug asked as he noticed her struggling.

“Yes, I have it now.” Christy pushed her suitcase toward the door, feeling Doug right behind her, prodding her onto the train.

Tracy found a seat inside and plopped down her bag, motioning for Christy or Doug to sit next to her. Katie was behind Doug. Christy sat next to Tracy and didn’t notice the doors closing until she heard Katie’s loud yelp. They looked up. All they could see was Katie’s backside wedged between the two closing doors, keeping it open.

“You guys, help!” Katie yelled.

Christy wanted to burst out laughing but swallowed hard and hurried to help Doug pry open the door. They separated it far enough for Doug to yank Katie and her luggage inside the train just before it started to move.

“Katie, are you okay?” Tracy said. “You could have been killed! What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I didn’t want to get separated from you guys. That seems to be the theme of this trip, doesn’t it?” Katie dropped her canvas suitcase on the floor at Christy’s feet and held on to a long metal bar next to the seat. “I think we need to make a plan B here, Doug. If I hadn’t made it on this train, I would have been completely lost. I don’t even know where we’re staying! How would I ever have found you guys? We need a little more teamwork.”

“You’re right.” Doug reached for the back of Christy’s seat to steady himself as the train picked up speed and jostled them from side to side. The four of them huddled closer together, Christy and Tracy in the seats and Katie and Doug standing above them. Christy felt sure they were a humorous spectacle to all the other passengers.

“Okay,” Doug said, assuming his coach voice, “we’re staying at the Miles Hampton on Seymore Street. We get off at Hyde Park. It’s only a few blocks’ walk to the hotel. If you guys need help with your luggage, just tell me. And let’s make an agreement that we’ll all stick together and look out for each other, okay?”

Doug’s “few blocks” turned into more like a few miles. Either that, or they were lost.

“Can I look at the map again?” Katie stopped in front of another row of houses that looked just like the row of houses on the last street they had walked up. “Are you sure this place is a hotel?”

“It’s a bed-and-breakfast.” Doug willingly dropped the canvas luggage he held in both hands and reached for the map. “My parents stayed there a couple years ago. They said it was easy to find. Look, here’s Seymore Street. What street are we on now?”

Christy parked her rolling suitcase and gladly took the heavy black bag off her shoulder. She couldn’t believe how tired she was from walking. For the first time since they began their parade through the streets of London, Christy stopped and drew in the sights around her. Tall, narrow brick houses lined the street. Black taxis drove past them on the “wrong” side of the road. Noisy cars and buses honked their horns. A small, furry dog at the end of his owner’s leash barked at them as they walked past. From across the street came the merry sound of a little bell clinking as a woman entered a bakery.

“Uh-oh.” Christy looked up into the thick, gray sky and lifted her open palm heavenward. “I hope we’re almost there because it’s starting to rain.”

That’s when she noticed how cold it was. They had been walking so hard and so fast that she hadn’t realized the damp cold was creeping up her legs. Her jeans weren’t protection enough against the bitter cold, and her legs began to feel prickly and chilled to the bone.

“This way,” Doug said, heading down the street with long, deliberate strides. “Only two more blocks.”

This time he was right. And it was a good thing. Just as they huddled under the bright blue canopy over the Miles Hampton door, the mist that had been teasing them for the past two blocks turned into a respectable London downpour.

The door was locked, so Katie rang the door buzzer a couple of times. A rosy-cheeked, white-haired woman peeked at them through the lace curtains drawn across the window in the door. “Who’s the impatient one?” she said brightly as she opened the door. “Come in, come in! It won’t do to have you catching cold your first day.”

It took only a few minutes to check in at the quaint B and B, as the woman called the bed-and-breakfast. Then they lugged their suitcases up four winding flights of stairs to the top floor, where two rooms awaited them. The girls’ room had three twin beds and a separate bathroom with the biggest bathtub Christy had ever seen. The house was old, but it had been nicely restored; the room was clean and fresh. Christy noticed how puffy the flowered bedspreads looked, and she flopped down on the nearest bed.

Tracy did the same, face first on the bed next to Christy. “This pillow is calling my name,” Tracy said. “It wants me to stay right here with it all day.”

Christy heard the rain tap-dancing on their window. She couldn’t help but agree with Tracy. After all, it was three in the morning back home, and none of them had slept on the plane during the ten-hour flight. A little nap would feel so good.

“Ready, gang?” Katie called, bursting through the door with Doug right behind her. “Let’s go see London.”

Christy and Tracy groaned.

“You guys definitely got the better of the two rooms.” Doug surveyed their wallpapered surroundings. “My room isn’t bad. It just feels more like I’m sleeping in an attic. Slanted ceiling. Kind of squishy. You even have a bathroom.”

“You don’t?”

“I get to use the one at the end of the hall on the floor below us. I don’t mind really. For the money, this is a great place. Besides, we’re not going to hang around here. We’ve got a city to explore!”

“Doug’s right, you guys.” Katie stepped into the bathroom and ran some water in the sink to wash her face. “The worst thing we could do would be to sleep now. We have to stay up all day to trick our internal clocks into thinking it’s daytime now and not nighttime. Hey, how do you get warm water out of this thing?”

Doug joined her in the bathroom and demonstrated how to use the sink stopper to fill the sink with hot and cold water at the same time, resulting in warm water.

“You mean only hot water comes out of this side and only cold out of this side? How archaic!”

“I hate to break this to you, Toto, but we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Doug said, sticking his fingers in the water and sprinkling Katie’s face. “This is a very old city. This is a very old house. It would follow that the plumbing would be a little on the archaic side.”

Doug dipped his fingers in the sink again and took three steps over to Christy’s bed where he sprinkled her. “Wake up! It’s time to have some fun.”

“Tracy,” Christy said, “I think the ceiling is leaking. I feel a drip.”

“Yeah, I hear a drip,” Tracy agreed.

“Oh, yeah?” Doug said. Before Christy or Tracy realized what was happening, Doug had dunked a hand towel into the full sink and began to wring it out over Tracy’s head. She screamed, jumped up, and started to laugh. “Doug! We’re not at the beach! You can’t go around splashing girls with water in London. It isn’t proper!”

They all laughed at Tracy’s fake British accent, which she attempted to employ on the last two sentences.

“Besides, Doug, it’s raining out there, and it’s so cozy in here,” Christy said in a pretend whine.

“I can make it rain inside too!” Doug threatened Christy with his wet hand towel.

“Okay, okay. Let me brush my hair first.” Christy traded places with Katie in the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Her reflection in the mirror startled her. Her cheeks were red, and her brown hair lay flat against her head, hanging lifelessly a few inches past her shoulders.

She thought of how cute Tracy’s short hair looked. She had cut it short, just below her ears, especially for this trip. Tracy’s hair had a lot of natural body and had kept its shape with only a quick brushing when they landed at Heathrow Airport.

Christy wondered if she should have gotten her hair cut short for the trip too. She knew Doug liked it long. She liked it long. It just looked so blah.

After trying to pull it back with a headband, put it in a ponytail, and quickly braid it, she gave up.

“Are you still alive in there?” Katie asked, knocking on the door.

“My hair is driving me crazy!” Christy said.

“You’re going to drive us crazy!” Katie yelled.

“Okay, okay.” Christy shook out her mane, washed her face, and stuck a scrunchie in her pocket in case she wanted to try a ponytail later. She opened the bathroom door, ready to go. A bright light flashed in her face.

“Thanks, Christy,” Katie said. “You’ve become my first official photo in London. Let’s go see what other funny-looking stuff we can take pictures of.”

“Oh. thanks a lot.” Christy reached for her coat and followed her friends down the long, winding stairs and into the front lobby.

“I want to get a close-up shot of one of those guards who stands in one place all day and never flinches,” Katie said. “Maybe I can get him to give me a little smile.”

“Food first,” Doug said as they stepped outside, all bundled up and holding their umbrellas high. “We must keep our priorities straight.”

The first food they found was, of all things, a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“I didn’t come all the way to England to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Katie said, looking down the street for signs of any other kind of restaurant.

“Come on,” Tracy pleaded. “It’s only a snack. We’ll find some fun English place for lunch. I don’t think Doug can hold out much longer.”

“Thanks, Trace.” Doug collapsed his umbrella and stepped inside the all-too-familiar-looking fast-food restaurant.

They all ordered from a lit-up menu above the counter that looked just like one from home. The only difference was the currency.

“That’s one pound, forty-five p. miss,” the man behind the counter told Christy. Christy handed him a ten-pound note and received a handful of change and a five-pound note. She joined the others at a table by the window.

“Isn’t this money weird?” Katie said, examining her change.

“Katie,” Tracy said, “didn’t we already go over the weird money thing?”

Christy was aware that the elderly couple at the table next to them was watching. She was also aware of how quiet it was for a restaurant full of people. Everyone else seemed to be speaking softly and keeping to themselves.

In comparison, Katie was extraordinarily loud. It bothered Christy. She guessed it was bothering Tracy too. Doug seemed unaffected.

He pulled out his handy-dandy map and pocket-size tour book. “Okay, so we’ll see Big Ben first, then the crown jewels at the Tower of London. We take bus 16, I think. No, maybe it’s bus 12.”

“Let me see that,” Katie said, snatching the tour book away from Doug. “Oh, Charles Dickens’s house. That would be an interesting tour. Let’s go there after the Tower of London.”

“It’s on the opposite side of town. Katie,” Doug said.

“No, it’s not. Look, it’s right here by…oh, you’re right. Okay, then let’s go to St. Paul’s Cathedral. That’s only two inches away from the Tower of London.”

“Let’s just go and see what we can see,” Tracy suggested, tossing her trash into a bin that was marked “rubbish.”

Christy was glad it wasn’t up to her to plot their course or decipher how to get there. She was happy being a follower and letting Katie and Doug be the pioneers.

They hopped on a bus near the Marble Arch that took them to Piccadilly Circus. Doug told them to get off and look for bus 12, which would take them to Parliament and Big Ben.

Riding on the top of the double-decker bus was fun, Christy thought, because she had a good view of the bustling streets below and of the statues and monuments everywhere. What she didn’t like was getting off, shivering under her umbrella, and listening to Doug and Katie argue. She also hated feeling lost and confused.

It seemed worse when they got off in front of the huge, architecturally intricate Parliament Building and found that the famous old clock, Big Ben, was so shrouded in fog that it hardly seemed worth the effort to take a picture. Christy did, however. Her camera, a gift last year from Uncle Bob, had served her well during her senior year as a photographer on the yearbook staff. She knew when she returned home she would be glad she had the pictures, even if they were all gray and foggy.

“Well, that was a thrill.” Katie spun around and blocked Christy’s viewfinder with her umbrella. “What’s next?”

Without saying anything to Katie, Christy took a few steps to the right and adjusted her zoom again before snapping a picture of Big Ben. “Why don’t you guys all stand there by the fence, and I’ll take a picture of you with Parliament in the background?”

The three obliged, umbrellas bumping each other and people passing in front of the camera. Christy snapped the picture, then turned around and snapped a shot of the street behind them with a black taxi and a red bus passing each other in the heavy traffic.

“Do you want to see the River Thames?” Doug asked. “According to this map, it’s right over there, beyond that park.”

“What’s to see?” Katie asked.

“It’s a famous river.” Doug said. “Come on. Have a little adventure, Katie.”

“I did have a little adventure. I saw Big Ben. Now I want a big adventure. I want to see the jewels and the guards in the big furry hats.”

“We’re so close to the river.” Tracy said. “Maybe we should look at it so we can at least say we saw it.”

“Whatever we do, could we take a bus?” Christy asked. “My legs are freezing!” She wished she had taken the time to put on a pair of tights when they were at the hotel. She felt cold. Wet cold. Miserable cold.

“It’s only a quick walk to the river,” Doug said, taking Christy’s hand. “If we walk fast, you’ll warm up. Come on.”

Off they went to the river. In Katie’s words, the wide, gray, fog-mantled water looked “like Big Ben, only horizontal and without numbers.”

They were hoofing it back to catch another bus when Tracy noticed an old, interesting-looking building on their left.

“Let’s check the tour book, Doug. I’m sure that’s something important.” Tracy said.

Christy hated standing still in the drizzle. She stomped her feet to get them warm and to shake the chill off her legs. “You guys,” Tracy exclaimed, “that’s Westminster Abbey!”

“Great.” said Katie. “What’s that?”

“It’s a very old church.” Tracy said, scanning the tour book. “It says here that this site was first used as a place of worship in the year A.D. 604. Can you even imagine how old that is? And listen to this: ‘Since the eleventh century. the church has been the coronation site of English kings and queens.’ We have to see it, you guys. There’s a bunch of famous people buried there. Charles Dickens is buried there!”

Katie noticed that the drizzle had let up and closed her umbrella while Tracy was reading. With squinting eyes she moved in for a closer look at Tracy. “Are you serious here, girl? You really want to go look at a bunch of old dead people?”

“This is Westminster Abbey. It’s famous, Katie!”

“Well, so was Big Ben. And that turned out to be a real dud!”

“Can I cut in here, you two?” Doug closed his umbrella and stepped in between them. “I think we’re all pretty tired and hungry. Why don’t we find someplace to eat and decide what to do next after we’ve had some food.”

“Great idea,” Christy said. “I’m freezing. I think my socks got wet. My feet are numb.”

“What do you say, ladies? A nice spot of tea, perhaps?”

They couldn’t help but release their tension when they heard Doug try a British accent on his last sentence. Then following their trail back up the road toward Trafalgar Square, the four cold, wet, weary travelers went in search of a quiet little restaurant and a hot cup of tea.