One Day in London

Well, we only had one day in London, so what to do on a Saturday in the city? We decided that since I couldn't walk very fast, taking a bus tour might be our best bet. There's a few bus companies that do the city tours. Two of the most popular are The Original Bus Tour and The Big Bus Tour. We decided on the latter one. You've seen these buses before. They are the double-decked red buses. Other big "tourist" cities have them. It really was a good choice for us. On our trip to London last June, Bob and I were able to see many of the big tourist sights. But to do that to that required alot of walking and really two full weekends in town. The bus tour gave us a chance to see alot of the city, some parts we hadn't gotten to on foot before, and it was most enjoyable not having to walk with the brace. The weather was a bit rainy in spots, so at those times, we just moved from the top deck to the covered bottom one. A ticket on these buses allows you to hop off and on all throughout the day. There were actually two long tours, the red one and the blue one. They overlapped a bit, but if you took both and didn't get off the buses, the whole tour took over 4 hours. We did hop off at one point to go into the Churchill Museum and War Rooms. That was a very interesting exhibit. The war rooms are located below the Treasury Building. This is where Churchill conducted business during World War II. There's also a wonderful interactive exhibit all about Churchill. Highly recommend it.

London seemed extremely crowded this trip. I don't know if it was because I felt I couldn't keep up with the crowds or what. But Bob agreed it was much more congested than last June. Well, then we found out that it was the Queen's 81st birthday, and there was a big parade and celebration that morning which brought a huge crowd into the Buckingham Palace area. Lots of important people besides the Queen were in attendance, including Prince William and Margaret Thatcher. The police were out all over the city. But I think London would be crowded anyway. Bob and I both decided that London has New York beat hands down in the shopping department. The bus tour brought us through shopping areas that we hadn't seen before and there is definitely more shopping here than in New York! And again, everything is very expensive. We went into a big department store called Selfridges. It's not quite as big as Harrods, but also not as pricey as Harrods. Some interesting facts about Harrods Department Store: it employs over 6,000 people! It has its own water and electric company! It has 11,000 lights on the front of its building which are illuminated every night, making for a very pretty sight. Yes, Harrods is quite an experience. Only people with a huge amount of shopping stamina should enter its doors. My big purchase of the day was actually at a Boots Pharmacy where I was able to find (on sale too!!) a face/wrinkle cream that you can't find in Target since it was on the news in the states. Target can't keep it on the shelves, and it's been out of stock for awhile. You can't even order it online. It's made by a British company called No.7. So I thought I should be able to find it over here. Yeah, that was my big purchase, but I am excited!

We ended our evening with dinner at an Indian restaurant back in the Notting Hill area of London. The next morning was an early one as we had to catch an 8:00 am flight to Munich. The alarm went off at 4:30. Not fun. Then when we got on the plane, they couldn't get the engines started (British Airways), so we had to sit for awhile. When they finally got the problem solved, we had missed our take-off slot, so we had to wait another hour. Things got better after that though. The flight was short (under two hours) and we got picked up by a business associate of Bob's. He invited us over to his home for a barbecue where we spent a lovely afternoon with great food and drinks. Now at nearly 11:00 at night, Bob is working on an"ops review" that needs to be into the office sometime tomorrow. The hotel is nice, but no A/C, and Munich is a bit warm tonight. Hopefully sleep will come soon. Aufviedersehn!