Our good friends, Hank & Debbie Rogers and Tammie and Clifford Finch were talking about their trip to London and LaVerl & I just kind of invited ourselves along- so here we are!!! We flew to London on Monday, Sept 8th. I booked our flights through Priceline, so our departing flight had a stop at Chicago O'Hare Airport! I was not happy about that because we only had 55 minutes to make our connecting flight, also changing Airlines!! We were flying American, then transferring to British Airways! I was super stressed about it for days worrying. Then the night before our flight, sitting at J'net's house in Mesa, I get a phone call from British Airways asking if we would like a direct flight to London?? Would I?? It was an answer to my prayers and definitely a "tender mercy"!! We flew out later in the evening and arrived in London after a 9 hours overnight flight around 2:30. By the time we got our luggage and finally found out where our Uber driver was parked, we didn't get to our motel room until after 4pm. We were tired, not sleeping well on the plane at all!! Our friends met us downstairs and helped bring our heavy bags up 3 flights of stairs. There are no elevators in these really old motels. Our room is tiny, our suitcases are on the floor beside my side of the bed which I have to step in to get into bed. We rested a bit, then we all headed out to catch a bus to watch "Mousetrap" at a theater. All the subways (the tube and the trains are on strike and so the buses are super crowded!
DAY 1 Tuesday Sept. 9th
They served us dinner and breakfast on the plane!! Who knew?
We stayed at the old Brompton Inn in South Kensington.
We didn't get back to the motel until after 10:30pm. We were tired and 'ready for beddy' as my mommy says!!
DAY 2 Wednesday Sept 10
We slept until 9am, then hurried at got ready for our first day of seeing London!! I can honestly say that London is AMAZING! The old buildings with unique architecture just keep going on and on. Every street we went on had beautiful old buildings. Again, we got on the bus (for $8 a ride per person). Everyone has to have their own card and LaVerl forgot his credit card, so he had to borrow one of Hanks to get around all day. We bought some other 'all day pass', but it only worked once, so not a good deal. We toured on the bus a while, then got off and walked over 5 miles that day. We rode "The Eye", a huge ferris wheel. We walked through 'China town' and had a good meal there. Then we walked and walked trying to find the right bus location for our night tour of the city. My watch says we walked 5 miles!
It rained on us quite a bit!
So I learned something new- This is what I thought was called "Big Ben" the clock, right? No- Big Ben is actually the bell of the Great Clock of Westminster. The Tower is the 'Elizabeth Tower'. The gorgeous building is Westminster Abbey.
The "EYE" - the most popular tourist attraction in London, over 3 million people ride it every year. London has 32 buroughs and the 'Eye' has 32 capsules to ride in and it takes 32 minutes to go all the way around. Very clever! The river is the Thames.
They have 'uber boats!'
Can you see us girls hiding behind the crew?
The night tour was awesome. London at night!
That was the end of a long day of sight seeing in London!!
