Monday

We left Ontario at 6:40 AM Monday morning on Southwest Airlines. Flew to Phoenix, then on to Chicago where we changed planes. Flew from Chicago to Washington D.C., where we then changed to Virgin Atlantic. Left Washington after 11 PM, arrived in London about 11:30 AM Tuesday. We slept some on the plane but were still pretty tired. We were met at the airport by a driver with a van, who then drove us to our hotel. We were very pleased with our hotel, which was a good thing as we were too tired to do anything about it if we weren't! Walked around some, then took a nap, ended up going to dinner at The Swan, a neighborhood pub. Craig and I were on the 7th floor and our room looked out over Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Quite a beautiful location. Vickie and Cathy's room overlooked an apartment building, which they will never let us forget!

Then we walked down Queen's Way to look at all the souvenir shops and the local shopping center, Whiteley's. Had dinner at a wonderful Lebanese restaurant where the food was great and the people were friendly. I was quite impressed with how clean London is, and how friendly everyone is as well. Almost everyone we talked to was from another country.
All of us slept quite well Tuesday night, as you can imagine.

On Wednesday, we took the Big Bus tour, which was a hop on and hop off tour. Saw a lot of wonderful sights, Tower of London, Big Ben, St. Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye, Picadilly Circus (which just means "circle"), and even shopped at Harrod's. Stopped, not shopped! Those prices are waaaaaay out of our league. Nordstrom's doesn't even compete with them.
Went back to our room and took a nap again, even Cathy !
We then walked through Kensington Gardens and around Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana resided. We walked down "Embassy Row" and saw all the beautiful Embassies and private mansions located there. Cathy and I were looking through a wrought iron gate at one of the embassies, when a voice came over the intercom, telling us "Ladies, please do not touch the gates." Who, us????
Went to dinner for Indian food, then went back to the hotel and to bed !

Finally, today we had a driver take us to Southamptom to the cruise ship. We didn't have as much energy to do things as we thought we would !! Pictures will be forthcoming, hopefully tomorrow. We have to work out a few connection issues to download them, but hopefully that will be worked out successfully.