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20140503 Saturday Amsterdam to London PhotoLink

Intentions: Today, we leave the ship and Vantage Travel and are on our own again. We’ll depart early to fly Amsterdam to London Heathrow. Then I think we’ll take a hired car to Sanctuary House Hotel. This is a small hotel with attached pub owned by Fuller’s, the brewers, in Westminster near Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

Actuals: Up at five bloody thirty for our 1020 plane. We put out the luggage and went to breakfast. Wally & Mary Kay said they were going to sleep as late as possible before beginning their three-day Amsterdam add-on. Judeen Johnson came over to eat with us.

About a dozen of us boarded the bus for Schipol airport. At the airport, a Vantage person met us and gave us directions. We hobbled to T3 and British Air. We checked in, then got a wheelchair. I pushed Dolores back to T1, then to gate D53, damn near at the end of a wing. Felt like we’d walked to Germany. The gate wasn’t open yet so we sat at a power bar until it did. Security was done in the gate itself (why?). We claimed bad leg and went on board with the sick, lame, and lazy.

The flight was a nice 1:10 that took a little longer because we circled a while waiting for a place in the queue to Heathrow.

We met a wheelchair person in the chute coming off the plane; he took us to an electric jitney and ran us all the way through customs to baggage claim. We let him go there. Our luggage came out, we changed some Euros for GBP and went to the taxi rank. Eighty pounds later, we pulled up to the hotel. Too early to check in, so we went into the pub for lunch. I had lasagna with my London Pride ale and Dolores had Cock-A-Leakie pie with shiraz. A shared brownie for desert and up to the hotel (reception is on the first (our second) floor. They had our room ready, so we checked in and went to the room.

Dolores turned on the BBC. We both fell asleep for a while, making up for our early rising.

We got a map from the reception person and walked the area for a bit. In doing so, we stumbled into the Westminster Cathedral, the Catholic mother church for England and Wales. Saturday evening mass had just ended, which let us briefly step in and look at it. It’s a huge pile of brick, with mosaics here and there (they’re leaving space for future generations to add more).

We stopped at a Waitrose mini-market and bought cokes, etc., for the room.

And then we returned to our hotel’s pub and had a light meal pre-bed. Daylight fades around 2130 here.

To bed to rest.


20140504 Sunday London ..... PhotoLink-O ... PhotoLink-D ... PhotoLink-EveningWalk

Intentions: Attend church at 1100 at St Patrick’s in Soho Square; it has become “our” church in London. The 1100 service includes wonderful music and choir selections. We’ll look at Buckingham Palace and the Westminster area.

Actuals: We got up slowly and then attended church in Westminster Cathedral. The 1030 was a high mass with a cast of about 85 including priests, deacons, the choir, the boys choir, the altar staff, the LEMs, and the organist. Wonderful choreography - I saw no missteps in the proceeding that was rife with exit-stage-lefts, enter-stage-rights, column-lefts, and incense flying in every direction. The attendance was good, perhaps 80%.

After the hour and twenty minute service we started a walk down Victoria Street, getting close enough to the rear of Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Then we cut off and returned to the hotel pub for lunch. Dolores had the Sunday Roast while I had a steak-and-ale meat pie. Good.

We decided to rehearse our bus trip to the British Museum tomorrow in order to get our timing down. We did that (leave an hour before the booking) and returned to the hotel so Dolores could put up her foot.

We started watching the world snooker championships on TV. Don’t giggle, the highest snooker winner gets about 400k pounds per year. It’s down to two people with nine “frames” left tomorrow.

Later we took another walk in the cool but clear weather, this time to Parliament Square. We shot pictures of Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s church (vintage Henry VIII) plus Big Ben and lots of tourists. Hiking back, we stopped in a “Pret A Manger” (“ready to eat” in English, they’re everywhere in London) storefront shop for a light meal. We stopped in the pub downstairs for a glass and then up to the room and rest.

For those of you wanting a small hotel in London, this could well be your choice. The room (twin double #104) is large by English standards and comfortable. There’s a tube station at the next corner, and bus stops two blocks away, four stops to the Leicester Square theatre area. One can easily walk to the Parliament buildings and Victoria Station-area theatres.


20140505 Monday London

Intentions; We’ll go to the British Museum for the Viking exhibit, where we are scheduled for the 1400 admission. We’ll undoubtedly do a stop at the Museum Tavern post-museum.


Actual: Up in a leisurely fashion. Coffee & biscuits in the room. Then we bused to Oxford Street to a small Italian restaurant called Giotto, and had lunch there. We walked to the Museum Tavern and killed some time (we were early) sitting at an outside table in the sun and breeze - beautiful.

We entered the museum and wandered through the shops until our time for the Viking exhibit. It was great. I didn’t know that many artifacts of the Viking 800-1050 era exist. And some of them reflect wonderful handworked engraving. No photography was allowed (darn), so we have no pictures. I suggest you look at the British Museum website to see some of them.

Dolores’s foot required band-aids at this point, so we applied them and returned to the Museum Tavern for a glass. The Scot we’ve seen there before, named Graham, wasn’t around today. Then we grabbed the #24 bus back to Victoria Street and our hotel to rest.

Later, a short walk to “Pret” for a sandwich & return. Nibbling and reading.