Back A Couple Of Days Now!

I will do a couple of posts each day I think, one with any news and the other a report on a stage of our 6 week trip overseas. The first day in London post appears below this one.

Kim has arrived to be with us for a few days. She doesn't see that she will be able to get any more days off for the rest of the year so had to get up to see us from Melbourne immediately.

We had great steaks at the Golden Beach Tavern on Thursday night. Trish then slept for over 10 hours. I awake during the night still thinking I am in a hotel in Europe somewhere! A bit of a walk around town yesterday as well as a trip for me to the Chiro. Prawns and Calamari for tea last night along with a few home brews and a couple of glasses of red wine. Then I enjoyed watching my first game of footy for over 6 weeks!

Another night's sleep, Trish got a good 10 hours again!

I am busy organizing movies from the internet for Kim to take home.

First Day In London

The flight from Australia to London took about 24 hours. We arrived there fairly refreshed as we had managed a good snooze as the plane passed through about 12 hours of darkness. We were delivered to our hotel in Oxford St Marble Arch about 9 am. We were unable to access our room so we headed out for a look around!

We just seemed to walk and walk! Oxford St is the major street for shopping in London and our hotel was right on the end of it. We had a small "Tesco" (a major supermarket chain) just near the hotel too. This was great for drinks, snacks and other needs.

After leaving Oxford St we walked along New Bond St which is the London home of Tiffany's, Cartier, Gucci, Chanel and all the major upmarket shops. The weather was warm with a top of about 28 degrees and we spotted plenty of sunburnt Londoners! Our next stop was a shop called Fortnum and Mason which sells all sorts of things including chocolates. The photo below shows their chocolate display counter!


Every turn took us to another recognizable place or statue. Here is Trish at Piccadilly Circus. London traffic is best described as horrendous. It is almost as quick to walk when heading to some places! We found a London Tourist Information Office and updated our hotel supplied London Map! We walked past streets such as Pall Mall and Oxford Circus.

We walked on to Trafalgar Square and had a good look round. Our walk back to the hotel took us through Soho and the West End. You just look in amazement at the stage show titles, a newer and better show on each street corner!

We arrived back at the hotel and into our room. Plasma TV, huge bed, couch, big bathroom and an amazing view along Oxford St!

We found an Indian restaurant for our evening meal before collapsing into bed for a sound night's sleep! Prices were a little more expensive than what we would pay at home. Every time you bought something you went through the process of converting back to Australian dollars to get the real value!

We had another 2 full days in London ahead of us before we left for our first bus tour which was of UK and Ireland!

Home Again

After about 22 hours in the air (not counting a couple of one hour stop overs) we flew into Brisbane Airport on Wednesday night at about 8 pm. We cleared immigration and customs reasonably quickly and then hired a car to drive back home to the Sunshine Coast getting home at about 10 pm.

We unpacked and I did a few 'must do's' (update the computer, check emails, update virus definitions, got the pay TV running again etc) and we went to bed just after 11 pm. However our bodies were still running on London time and getting a long night's sleep was impossible! I was back up again at 4 am playing around downloading photos and transferring them between computers off several flash cards!

Our youngest daughter Kim is visiting us arriving at 11:30 pm today!

Generally we had fantastic accommodation during our trip. On arrival in London we stayed at the Thistle Marble Arch, a 4 star hotel right in the middle of London's prime shopping street! Here is the view from our hotel window!

I have a score of jobs to do so must away. More news will follow over the next few weeks.

Hi From Heathrow!

I have grabbed a few minutes free internet time at Heathrow Airport to add a quick post! We fly home from UK in about one hour. It will take about 27 hours all together including stopovers in Dubai and in Bandar (Brunei).

It will take a day or so to get things organised and back into a routine.

Hopefully I can share some photos.

We have seen so many wonderful things, the Mona Lisa, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Venice, Eiffel Tower. We have been to Prague and Budapest.

I will tell you and show you more of this over the next few weeks!

Confirmed!

Thanks to people with their kind words in their emails.

Our bus trip to Brisbane Airport tomorrow morning has been confirmed. We are being collected from our home at 8:00am. After a considerable time on hold, Royal Brunei Airlines has confirmed our flight for tomorrow, departing at 12:30pm. The Airline representative told us to be checked in 2 hours before the due take-off time. We had the understanding we should have been there 3 hours prior to take-off!

The front lawn has been mown, I had a quick checkup at the dentist this morning, the BBQ has been put under a plastic cover. Later on the pool will get another clean, the chairs will be locked in the garden shed and the bins will be put out the front.

See you in about 6 weeks!