Sunday September 5 - Going Home

Today we are finally headed home. The taxi arrived at 6:30AM. It has been a great vacation but it is exciting to finally go home. Here is a shot of our building. Our flat is the first one above the door with a balcony.

Sunrise on the Chelsea Bridge on way to the airport.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning.

There was no one at the airport that Sunday morning and we were checked in and through security within 1 hour. That gave us 2 hours to do some last minute duty free shopping. Cameron decided to check his email before we boarded the plane.

Here I am making some final posts before we leave. How did we end up with so much stuff.....

When we made our initial reservations we pre-booked our seats on both flights. However, United airlines changed the plane and the seats were different. I was assigned to sit by myself. A flight attendant started a conversation with us and I noticed the row behind Audra, Cam and Alex was empty. I asked her if I could move there. Right before we took off, she said go for it. We ended up with 2 rows and 6 seats.

Life is good....

The plane allowed us to watch several movies at our leisure.

I did not sleep on the plane since I knew if I did I would be up at 1AM Monday morning in LA. As it turned our, I fell asleep at 6:00pm Sunday night and woke up at 1:00 AM Monday anyway, Bummer.

We arrived home safe and sound Sunday afternoon at 1:30 PM. After we went through immigration, customs and gathered up our luggage it was now 2:30 PM. We were very grateful that Sandra set us up with a limo ride home. What made it even better was there was a traffic jam on the 405 due to an accident and that delayed us even more. We arrived at our door at 3:30.

Home sweet home!!!

Satuday September 4

One of the things we wanted to do today was see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. I went online to find out when it takes place and it is this morning at 11:30. We headed out at 10:15 and flagged down a taxi.

He took us right to the front of the palace. We were met there by the other 10,000 or so tourists in London.

We were all looking for a spot to watch. Somehow, we were shuffled to a place right next to the main gates but did not give us much of a view to the actual activity going on inside. However, we did get to see the guards, band and horses marching into the palace.

Why am I here?

Once inside the palace, the band began to play several tunes.

We decided to head out of the crowd.

Yup, been there done that.

We walked down the main road away from the palace pick up some lunch and take it with us on the blue line tour bus.

We had about 3 ½ hours to get in the remaining time our tickets had left. After we had another tour while eating our lunch, I realized the blue line would take too long to go all around its route so we hopped off ½ way through and headed to the boat docks to get on the river cruise.

When the Shard building is complete, it will be the tallest building in London, the UK and the European Union. It will be 72 stories tall and will be a pyramid shape.

The river cruise was fun because one of the crew did an entertaining narration that was funny. We got off at the tower of London and spent the next few hours exploring the grounds. We also went and viewed the crown jewels.

Our Beefeater tour guide

the Beefeater's were everywhere

Yeah, I want one....

On the way out.

In front of the Tower of London.

Catapult in front of modern buildings.

After the tower of London, we went walking around looking for someplace to eat dinner. There were no places open which was strange since it was Saturday. We asked a local for advise and they told us to go back to Trafalgar Square since that is where most eating options were.

another monument...

Who is ready to go back to school?

The city was pretty clean. They have a special place for gum and cigarette butts.

We decided to take a regular public double-decker bus to Piccadilly Square. However, since it was Saturday, the bus only took us to Trafalgar Square.

We could not agree on where to eat. We decided to eat at Garfunkel’s again.

Did I have fun today?

Since we had purchased so many things we needed to get yet another bag. This bag would be a checked bag for the trip home. We asked our waitress where we could find this bag and she said go to LillyWhite. It was located in the Piccadilly Square. We had only 15 minute to make it there. We found it and got a bag for only 10 pounds, what a bargain. We did some more shopping in that store since they had such great bargains.

Great bag for 10 pounds!

No more shopping!!!!

After we were done, we get a taxi back to the flat. The taxi drove right through Piccadilly Square. There were so many people that it reminded me of Paris.

Audra and I stayed up late and packed up everything. Our airport ride would arrive at 6:30AM tomorrow morning.

Update

As you may already know, we arrived home safe and sound (and tired) last Sunday afternoon. I got sick during the last days of the trip so I got behind with my posting. This delay was compounded by the kids returning to school 2 days later. I'm almost recovered and now Audra is getting sick.

I will post the last couple of days of our trip within a week. I also downloaded all the video and will create links if you want to view them.

Thanks for following us.