Last day in London

Tomorrow we leave for home, which sounds good to us.  We've seen a lot of fabulous sites.  Today was laid back, with a stroll down the famous street market on Portobello Road in Notting Hill.  Walked past a house with a historical marker saying it was formerly home to George Orwell.

The market runs about two miles and is basically a huge garage sale. Lots of interesting antiques and unique souvenir's.

September 18 was the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death here in London. Normally, we would not mark this event, but that night saw a big event being held in our hotel. That and two days of seeing mini-buses marked "Londonrocktour.com" stop outside the hotel clued us in that our location was related to Jimi.  Seems this was his first home in London - September to December, 1966.

History Lessons

Fortunately it was not a foggy day in London Town, so no need for alarm and the British Museum had NOT lost its charm.

A medium tube ride from Queensway station to to Totten Hill Rd. and then a short walk to the museum.  My favorite exhibits were the Egyption room with the Rosetta Stone, Roman Britain, European history from hunter-gathering times through the Middle Ages and the clock and watch exhibit.  Truly an extraordinary place with collections dating back to the 18th century.  Afterwards grabbed a bite on a nearby side street lined with cafes.

I was told there would be beer.

The guidebooks waxed lovingly about the beer selection in the pubs, and I was looking forward to experiencing something different.  Well, not so much.

Admitedly, my experience is limited to three pubs and our hotel bar, but that fabled selection has been nowhere to be seen.  What is available is some standard Mexican brew, Australia's Fosters, Budweiser..!?, A local very ordinary London Pride and Guinness in a bottle.  Actual brands may vary, but this is representative of a typical selection.  I realized that I was expecting something like a good selection of microbrews in one of our trendy restaurants or bars.  Hmm... maybe I should try Ireland.

A fun, not too tiring day today.  We had a brunch at the Orangery, a cafe in the old greenhouse of Kensington Palace and a nice walk from our hotel through Hyde Park.  Then we took the tube down to the parliament area and toured the Churchill wartime bunker in the basement of one of the government buildings.  Very interesting.

Now we are back enjoying happy hour at our hotel and getting ready to have dinner.  Probably Chinese tonight.

Random observations and rolling suitcases

Today we stayed mostly in our hotel neighborhood, with a trek to the adjacent area of Notting Hill.  After nearly a week and a half,  and visiting the laundromat, shopping in the food markets, seeing a movie and walking the streets, we are fairly familiar with life here.  Basically, it reminds one of the Capital Hill section of Seattle.  Queensway, next street over from our hotel,  is the Broadway of the area.  It usually sports a younger crowd, but all ages are present.  There are schools, churches - even Brigham Young University! 

Although we are many decades past the heyday of Carnaby Street and Mary Quant, young women in England continue to be particularly fashionable.

Not surprisingly, bicycles are everywhere and completely integrated into the traffic flow - no need for "bike lanes" here.  There is even a bicycle share service similar to the car share schemes in our cities.  Speaking of bicycles, they were naturally everywhere on the campuses of Cambridge and Oxford. In those towns the considerable number of large, metal bike parking structures were all full of tethered bikes.  On closer examination, several of those bikes had flat and rotting tires, as if they had been there for months or years.  were they left behind by graduates for underclassmates and some went unclaimed? or were the graduates just glad to blow that place and the bike was too much trouble to take with them?

Of course the cars are different here - steering wheel on wrong side, generally smaller.  I was struck by the number and variety of French cars. Renaults, Peugeots and Citroens are everywhere. Lots of small people mover styles.  Another big difference is body style.  Station wagens and hatchbacks are far more popular than  sedans and coupes. In the parking lot in the picture, there is only one sedan - can you spot it?

And the rolling suitcases.  We don't know why, but there are several people pulling suitcases in the neighborhood at any hour.  We've seen them at 7:30 in the morning to 11:00pm at night.  Sure there are a lot of hotels in the area, but the number and time of day are unusual.  Are they used as large briefcases?  Laundry transport?  shopping cart?  We'll probably never know.

Tuesday, Sept 14 - Cambridge and Oxford

Once again we were off early in the morning by motorcoach.  We had planned to see Oxford, but it was a happy discovery to find a day trip that included both.  Interesting to compare and contrast.  These were primarily walking tours of both towns/universities, with some shopping thrown in.  It is awesome to look at a college building that dates back to the 13th century! Not the oldest building in Oxford, however.  That would be the Saxon Tower, which is over 1,000 years old.

 Back in our neighborhood, we had a nice dinner at Bella Italia and went to bed early for a much needed rest.

Monday Sept 13 - Back on the Road

Today is the second of our scheduled bus excursions.  Windsor Castle is the first stop, then onto Bath and finally Stonehenge.

We were at Windsor when they changed the guard.  Impressive structure, but one of  many buildings here in England that are.

Bath is a place we could come back to.  The ancient baths are interesting, but the real prize is the city itself.  The golden stone facades, the interesting shops on the streets and the surrounding countryside are fabulous.  Didn't see Nicholas Cage, but according to our guide, he lives here.

Stonehenge is as we expected.  Out in the country surrounded by fields.  Our guide told us how the stones were hauled to the site, but I'm still not sure how the stones, weighing many tons, were assembled.  Will have to check the Google for that.

Down Day

Today was a day to shift to a lower gear and relax.  Come to think of it tomorrow will be, too.  Not that we are doing nothing.  The agenda includes doing laundry, taking a walk in Hyde Park and seeing a movie. 

Update:  Saw the movie "Tamara Drewe".  Thanks to our Son-in-law for turning us on to this graphic novel.  Movie opened in the UK Friday, not in the US until October 9.  We enjoyed the book and the movie was great.  Liked the change in the ending.

Using a combination of television and internet to try to keep up with the U.S. Open and college football.  Darn! the Huskies don't play until 3:00am UK time.

September 10-Cotswalds and Blenheim Palace

Today was the first of several planned out of London excursions. Couldn't be easier. Early in the morning we hop a shuttle the next street over from our hotel, which takes us to Victoria Station, where we hop on the bus for our tour

Blenheim was always on our to do list,but the Cotswalds are a bonus. A very,very interesting and fun day!

Thursday, September, 9 - On our Own

No scheduled tour today. We took the tube to Westminister and toured the National Gallery and Trafalger Square. We walked back to our tube stop past Many government buildings and 10 Downing St. Most memorable painting was The Assasination of Lady Jane Grey. which, of course, took place in the Tower of London, where we had been the day before.

Bikes are plentiful.   The most unusual pedal contraption we saw was a 10 passenger "bus" just outside our hotel.

The once over

Wednesday is get on the bus day. The concierge at our hotel is going to have a lot of requests from us. The first is for an orientation bus tour on the mandatory double-decker. we chose to hop off at Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. The day ended with a short cruise on the Thames from the Tower to Westminster Pier , where we caught the tube back to our hotel. Yeah, some fabulous sights. No details here as you can get a description in any guidebook. Needless to say, we were thrilled. My only disappointment was that all those years of watching BBC productions on PBS did not facillitate understanding of British accents as well as I thought it might!

In addition to being well located and comfortable. our hotel has a great, free breakfast and a welcome happy hour in the bar from 4:oopm to 7:00pm. No need to miss Wine Time! Lots of interesting tourists to visit with, too.

The Adventure Begins Tuesday, Sept. 7

I'm a little behind on this blog so I'll have to label the reports with the actual days they happened.

The cab queue at Paddington

We anticipated Starting our adventures the first day, but reality had other ideas. After over nine hours of feeling like Spam in a Can on the plane, we landed just after noon in Heathrow. It took nearly an hour to clear the UK border entry. Finding the Heathrow Express was easy and we were at Paddington Station 30 minutes later. We needed to get a cab to our hotel, but this turned out to be a process. The queue was enormous for a one-fare-at-a-time cab pick-up. Over an hour after arrival at Paddington we were finally on the last leg of our journey to the hotel. We were starting to feel jet lagged now. We looked at each other and agreed we'd done enough for the day.

The staff at our hotel is great. The room isn't fancy,but better than we feared. We have a great location just north of Hyde Park. One block over is a major shopping and restuarant street.

Countdown to England

70 hours to our flight, For some reason I keep thinking about the Beatles' "Back in the USSR" Probably because of the reference to BOAC, which is now British Airways, our conveyance to Jolly Old England. Well, we hope to have a jolly old time. This has been in our plans for over 40 years and we're finally doing it!