London and the south of England

Well, we are off on another adventure! This time, my first trip to England (Russell has been here before). We experienced no delays at the airport which was a great relief to us considering all the negative stories in the press re. airport chaos. We, fortunately, experienced little of that unless you want to consider the mob scene at the American Express Centurion Lounge to be a hiccup. It was basically an intolerable situation. We left after a half hour to return to our departure gate where it was both cooler and more relaxing. 

The food on the plane was not good but our seats were nice enough that I was able to get some shut-eye as did R. We arrived in London and having not checked any bags we were able to proceed to the train without delay. We took the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station and from there a cab to our hotel in Covent Garden (aptly named “Covent Garden Hotel”). The room is lovely — very nicely decorated and ample in size — and the hotel staff are very friendly and helpful. But our room wasn’t ready when we arrived so we left our bags and headed out to see some sights. Not really knowing where we were going we walked around the Covent Garden market for awhile before heading towards the river. We chilled in the Embankment Gardens for awhile before heading across the river toward the London Eye. Then it was back across the river again for the Palace of Westminster, Parliament Square, St. James Park (with it’s charming Duck Pond) and lastly Trafalger Square which is pretty much being reconstructed from the bottom up. Crowds were intense in some areas but I’m hoping that won’t be too much of an issue for us. We are back at the hotel now relaxing before dinner downstairs in the hotel’s restaurant and then it will be to bed early for us because we have a big day planned for tomorrow. 

We estimated that we walked over three miles today and that didn’t include all the airport walking we did. Believe me my feet are feeling it.  It will be interesting to see how we both do with another full day of walking again tomorrow. Feels good to have made it here relatively incident-free and to be actually seeing sights that I have been reading about for months. 

Note: for some reason I am not able to post photos! Very frustrating. If you would like to receive some photos of our vacation shoot us a text or an email and we promise to keep the number reasonable.