I had started shifting my body clock ahead a few days before we left home. It was brutal waking up at 4am, 3am, 2am when the house was dark and chilly, but by the time we boarded the plane, it was past my new bedtime and I was quickly asleep, passing on the dinner offerings (not hard to do since our first stop at the airport was the lounge).
The Clermont Victoria is located next to Victoria Rail Station in London, and our original plan was to just take the Underground from Heathrow to Victoria Rail Station. But a closer look revealed that we would have to change trains and when we added a third checked bag, we decided to book a private transfer through Britway transfers. (Our three suitcases weighed 35 pounds each, which is about the max I’m willing to lift these days).
I had purchased a 5G digital eSIM for Europe through Airalo for my iPhone 15 Pro, just to use for maps and texting while in ports. Britway emailed me our driver info including his What’s App contact information and I texted him when we were through passport control at Heathrow, which is now totally automated and much faster than it used to be. We arrived at our hotel just before 3pm, walked over to the train station to grab a quick dinner and fell asleep early that night.
We had two primary goals for our first day in London: to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and to visit the Churchill War Rooms. We walked from our hotel to Buckingham Palace, and that really was a nearly impossible situation. I can’t imagine the crowds in the summer. The lady standing behind me said she was going back to her hotel to watch it on YouTube and I think she had the right idea. We had to choose: see the band arriving from St James Palace, see the band arriving from Wellington Barracks or see what was happening in the front courtyard of the palace. We chose the courtyard but got no good pics as we were watching over and between people. It was warm and very sunny (really) and way too people-y for my personal comfort.
Afterwards, we boarded a Golden Tours HOHO bus (we had booked a 2-day ticket just before we left home) and took it the short distance to the war rooms. Touring the rooms fit right in with what we’d been researching about WW2 and Operation Overlord and it was very worthwhile in all the ways that the Changing of the Guard was not.
We were wearing down but re-boarded a HOHO bus for a long tour around London, and it was on this bus, as we approached the Tower of London that I felt gut punched as I recalled that Mom and I had toured the tower, and I have a wonderful photo of her with a beefeater there. It was a feeling I’ve managed to avoid for over a year, because since I’ve returned from Ohio after her funeral, I haven’t been anyplace where I’d expect see her (and I have purposely avoided returning to Toledo for that reason). Saint Paul’s Cathedral had the same effect, and left me with a wistfulness similar to one of those “first” events (ie Mothers Day).
St. Paul’s Cathedrsl
Tower Bridge
Palace of Westminster
The lobby of The Clermont Victoria
We were too tired to do anything more than grab some takeaway at the Victoria Rail Station and collapse into bed.
We were slow to get moving the next day, but took a narrated boat tour down the Thames to the Tower of London, and then caught a bus back to our hotel. We wanted fish and chips in a pub, and the Victoria Tavern across the street was a possibility, but we didn’t want a bunch of tourists not talking to each other while they dined. When we walked by the tavern, loud crowds were spilling into the street and it gave us hope that this might be a real British pub experience. We found two leather chairs in a back corner and settled in.
It turned out this was a regimental reunion and these guys had come from all over England and knew how to party. We were swept right up into their fun and stayed far longer (and drank far more) than we had intended. But here’s the thing: we were sitting there and G looked at me and said that he just felt my mom’s presence next to us. And I hadn’t mentioned my own feeling the day before, sensing that she was everyplace we had been together decades earlier. I never suspected I’d have to go to London to reconnect with Mom, but she made sure to join us on this trip.
At least the land portion. Mom got seasick in a bathtub so it’s impossible to imagine her on the cruise with us right now. 😉
We stumbled back to our hotel, being quite relieved that we didn’t have to go any further than across the street to get there. We re-arranged the contents of our suitcases a bit to ease unpacking on the ship and fell asleep early. We had two busy days in a row coming up, and were already feeling very jet lagged.