The alarm went off at 5am, and I was grateful that I had at least bettered the previous night’s total of 3 hours of sleep. I threw on yesterday’s clothes and headed for the coffee pot, letting it sink in that in less than 24 hours we’d be in London. G’s first words to me? “Let’s go to London for lunch!” His second…”I’ve already disconnected the car batteries and shut off the breakers we don’t need”. You go G! That turned off power to the refrigerator, but all we had left in there was one more bag of Sams Club organic frozen broccoli (we ate a truckload of that this summer), and a few pieces of breaded chicken strips. G had the chicken for breakfast and I had the broccoli sprinkled with nutritional yeast (aka nooch, and very high in B vitamins...I’m still vegan/pescatarian) and the cupboards were bare.
Served on a paper plate.
I predict breakfasts will improve considerably over the next few days.
We spent a whirlwind couple of hours doing our final house prep tasks, including unplugging all unneeded electrical things, shutting off the water, turning down the hot water heater and propping cabinet doors open to keep the pipes from freezing, and then enjoyed those last long showers before dressing comfortably for an overnight travel day and heading for the airport.
I mentioned that we are using Princess’ Flexible EZ Air for our flights to London and from Shanghai to Honolulu. The fares we were able to lock in early, far before our final payment, were just unbelievable. Our flights to London were $157pp; I’d pay far more than that to fly to Toledo to visit my mom. Sure, we had Economy Class seats, but, by booking on United, we were able to choose our seats months ago, well before the tickets were actually purchased by Princess on our behalf. I had initially reserved American Airlines code share flights on British Air, but changed them when I was unable to make our seat selection until 45 days prior to the flight. We chose two aisle seats towards the back of the plane, in the middle section of the 787 aircraft, hoping for an open middle seat between us. As of right now, the seating chart shows that seat as occupied, but there are a lot of Economy Plus seats still open, and we’re hoping our seat mate gets an upgrade.
The weather in London for our two days there looks fantastic, and I’m very happy about that. This is G’s first time in London, and, with our limited time we chose to do an overview of the city rather than focus on any one site. Just before we left home today, I purchased Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) bus tickets. We had already decided to use the Golden Tours bus company (there are three different HOHO bus companies in London) simply because their office and a major boarding stop is right around the corner from our hotel. We were watching the weather before deciding to add tickets for the London Eye, the large Ferris wheel across the Thames River from Big Ben, overlooking the Houses of Parliament to our package. The combo package for 24 hours of HOHO bus, the London Eye, a Thames River Cruise and two walking tours (which we may not use) was $66 USD, but by booking online ahead of time, we saved 10%.
Our ‘view from high places’ obsession will be a recurrent theme this season ;-)
Source: https://www.cntravellerme.com/content/5578-ain-dubai-vs-London-eye
We’ll be spending two nights at the Comfort Inn Buckingham Palace Rd., just a few minutes walk from the Victoria Coach Station. It’s certainly centrally located, but, more important to me was the fact that we will be taking a Princess shuttle to Southampton on Sunday from Victoria Coach Station. I like staying close to where we’ll need to be in the morning, especially when it’s also as close to the sites as this hotel is. I had originally booked the Grosvenor Hotel, which is closer to Victoria (train) Station, but it’s a little further away from the bus station and quite a bit more expensive.
Source: ZenHotels.com
After I publish this post, I’ll be removing my (hard) contacts and taking an Ambien. We’ll get early boarding because my vision is so bad; in a perfect world I’ll be asleep before the plane takes off and will miss dinner service (I’ve packed Rx Bars for a snack), but, as we all know, this is a very imperfect world. A few hours of sleep, though, would help pass the time and make tomorrow easier, and I hope can at least get that.
When it’s midnight in New York...