Back To London

The last day of our Europe Trip was lost in the knowledge this fantastic experience would soon be over. The bus rushed to Calais from Paris to catch the ferry. We travelled though such fabled areas as The Somme and other names etched in memories from WWI. The countryside was green rolling farmland with wild poppies growing. It was quite moving.

We arrived at Calais in time to catch an earlier ferry which would ensure we were back in London by mid afternoon. For us this was perfect! Our last major chore was all the last minute shopping to be done. As soon as we had booked back in to our London Hotel Trish made a dash for Harrod's for last minute shopping. I went to the supermarket for 'supplies'.

This now meant our last full day in London was virtually free, and we had a Bus About ticket to use. Our previous time in London had been a bank Holiday weekend with terrible weather. This time we struck a visit by George Bush and many of London's streets were closed causing the Bus About tour to go off on a tangent! Again we passed "The Eye". We hopped off the bus to visit Covent Garden (see below) and hopped back on again to get to Oxford St. Again for some last minute shopping!


Another highlight was to actually cross The Tower Bridge.


Because of road closures we saw some spots several times. Our tour guide for the Europe Trip had advised us to spend some time looking at the War Cabinet Rooms which had been the nerve centre for Britain's World War II effort. It was extremely well set up with all sorts of actual items from those times. Some rooms had been left as they were, only a couple of mannequins had been added to make them more life like (see below).


We were quite exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel. We were being collected by 6 am the next morning for our transfer to Heathrow to catch our plane which left at about 10 am. We had our evening meal at a Pub near the hotel. This turned out to be a bit unpleasant as a couple of older English guys (both of whom had been to Australia a couple of times and loved it) had had much too much to drink and made our time a little unfortunate. They had meant no harm!

Needless to say we managed the 6:00 am departure from the hotel and endured the next almost 30 hours until we arrived in Brisbane at about 8 pm the next day! Our body clock however was saying it was about 10 am! We hired a car and arrived back home, safe and sound about 10 pm!

So ended an incredible 6 week tour of UK, Ireland and Europe!