I've never traveled further than Canada, and those were in the days when crossing the border consisted of a calm, polite Canadian officer asking why you were going to Canada and then wishing you safe travels and a good time.
In January, my 22 year old son will be going to serve in a mission in the Ukraine. He has never travelled internationally before, either. He flies out of Seattle, has a 20-hour layover at Heathrow in England, and then flies on to Kyiv, Ukraine. He will be met in Kyiv by someone who will drive him to the mission and this is all arranged so I'm not as worried about that part (although there is the whole issue of him not speaking a lick of Russian). The part I'm worried about is the 20-hour layover in England. He is talking about getting a hotel, seeing some sights, etc. But can he do that? Won't there be complications regarding having to go back through customs, etc? My thought is that he should probably just tough it out and spend the 20 hours trying to catch a nap someplace at the airport, but he is pretty insistant about this.
How does this work? I sure wish he had a travelling companion who was going with him but unfortunately, it's up to him to make his own way across the world! What do you experienced travellers know about long layovers in foreign countries?