A group of area teens was supposed to visit England's Parliament, ride the famous London Eye and catch an evening performance of The Producers on Thursday.
Instead, their sightseeing was cut short by a string of explosions that shut down London's transit system and kept them in their hotel eating snacks from a nearby convenience store, playing games and watching the news unfold on the "tele."
They were also counting their blessings.
The bus the group of 24 southern Minnesota and northern Iowa students was riding in drove past one of the four bombing sites less than 20 minutes after the explosion, said Cathy Rieber, a teacher from Skyline who is chaperoning the group.
"We were on our way to St. Paul's Cathedral and, all of a sudden, emergency vehicles and police cars started zooming past us," she said.
It was about 9:10 a.m. London time and they were near what is known as the Aldgate underground station for the city's subway system, known at "the tube." It's where the first of four explosions, three in underground trains and one on a double decker bus, was reported at 8:51 a.m.
Minnesota State University English professor Donna Casella might have been on the Aldgate train. Any other day, in fact, she could have been.
But on Thursday Casella broke from her usual routine of hopping on the subway and heading to the BFI Library in order to stop at a children's hospice to drop off money she'd raised through a charity walk.
"I would have been in the tunnel or even on that train," Casella wrote in an e-mail from London Thursday. "I got (to the hospice) and the TV was on about the explosion. I thought, 'Oh my God ... I would have been there at exactly the time of the explosion.'"
Casella said her phone has been ringing constantly, and she's been busy contacting her friends to assure them she's OK.
"They are still digging bodies out of the tube stations. People are walking home. No transport. Sirens are going off all over the place - ambulances. At first we thought it was a power failure and then it became clear it was a bomb when another went off at Russell Square Station and then Edgeware Road. The double decker bus in Tavistock Square was a sight. I am sure you've seen it on the news ... Everything is so sad and dark here."
Rieber and the students didn't realize what was happening at the time, but their bus driver got the news before their cathedral tour was over. People to People Student Ambassadors - the Spokane, Wash., organization in charge of the tour - had also heard about the situation and sent the students back to their hotel.
The calls to worried parents back home started after the slow trip back through snarled traffic.
Rick Fleming of Mankato heard from his son, Mark, at about 8 a.m., or 2 p.m. London time. Rick had been up since 5 a.m. watching the news and had been trying to contact Mark at his hotel for about two hours.
"They were supposed to be taking a tube ride this afternoon and tomorrow morning as part of the experience," Rick Fleming said Thursday afternoon, shortly after getting another update from his son. "Now they'll be going to a theme park outside London instead.
"The fortunate thing is they're safe."
There are 24 senior high school students and 28 junior high school students from the region participating in the trip. In all, People to People has more than 500 students from around the United States traveling in the United Kingdom.
Elaine Deschaine's daughter, Abbey Riedel, lives on the east side of London and works as a social worker downtown. Riedel usually goes through the King's Cross station, which was the site of another subway explosion, Deschaine said.
Riedel was off work Thursday, however, hoping to fly home out of London's Heathrow Airport. Her sister's getting married and she's supposed to be at her bachelorette party in St. Peter Saturday.
Getting out of Heathrow was a challenge, though. Riedel called her mom at 4:45 a.m. St. Peter time to tell her she'd missed her plane by 10 minutes. That's the first Deschaine had heard about the bombings.
All Deschaine knew Thursday afternoon is that her daughter had found a ticket to Reykjavik, Iceland. She was hoping to find a direct flight to the Twin Cities from there on Icelandair.
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