A nice sleep in today (6:00) good buffet breakfast, and we were “wheels rolling”at 7:30 on our way to Germany.
The motorway to Germany was not particularly interesting and Bern suggested that we would not be missing much if we had a nap. :). As we approached the boarder Bern announced that we would stop at a service station for a comfort stop. She warned us that the service station itself was basic ( and it was just like a small service centre with a cafe/restaurant.)
As we discovered yesterday, boarder crossings are non event – much like crossing our state boarders. Usually just a small sign on the side of the road The reason we stopped at this little service centre was because it is actually at a previous passport control boarder crossing. It was certainly an austere building.
We arrived at Boppard in time for our Rhine River lunch cruise. I had a good pork schnitzel and chips with a glass of local red wine On the cruise we passed lots of lovely little villages and some impressive castles.
The Reine River is now and has always been a major “highway” There are many barges that a sort of like semi trailers that just travel up and down the river delivering goods. The driver of the barge often lives in the small apartment ppm the boat. Can you see the living quarters on the right hand side of the picture? A lot of the barges even had a car on it so the driver could go out when he reached a port.
Back on the coach and on to Heildeberg.
Heidleberg was chocolate box pretty the village reminded us of a model train set. Bern took us for an orientation tour around the village and told us some history of the huge castle that overlooks the city. We had 90 mind free time to look at the shops and buildings then we off too our hotel for dinner.
Dinner was a buffet dinner as there was a conference in the hotel as well as us. The conference delegates the moan dining room, do the hotel gave us a private room. The buffet was typical German food. Cold meat and cheeses, a ( we guesses cream of cauliflower and broccoli) soup,a lovely beef goulash type dish, and steamed veges. We were actually all very excited to have veges and I noticed almost everybody with a full plate of vege 🙂
After dinner I excused myself from the table and had an early night.
Today is the first day of my coach tour :). From now on this blog may seem a little disjointed as I will type in small bits throughout the day from the bus and then upload (hopefully) each night when I have wifi at hotels
As mentioned already it was an early start. Breakfast was in the hotel at 4:30 and we boarded the coach at 5:00. There are just 26 of us so far with another 6 to collect in Amsterdam. So a nice small group of 32.
Our tour guide is Bernadette (Bern) and our driver is Mario. Bern has asked us if we all have our passports with us and not in our suitcases , as we have to pass through French Customs on English soil in Dover before boarding the ferry.
The trip from London to Dover is approx. 1.5 hours, it is a shame it is a wet drizzly day 🙁 but not too cold. Bern explained a bit about the trip and we just settled on for the drive. I did notice a service station on the highway with fuel prices of £1.26 so I guess we can’t complain to much about our fuel prices
We drove onto the ferry and could then get off the coach and have a look around the ferry. There were restaurants, coffee shops, bars and duty free shops on board. I bought a cup of tea and got chatting to an Aussie couple from Melbourne. The cruise was very smooth and an announcement soon came to return to vehicles.
Off the ferry , we travelled through the French countryside and on to Belgium. We were on a 100kph hwy that went through lush green country and quite a number of wind turbines.
Leaving Belgium, we crossed into The Netherlands. A short lunch stop at a highway service centre and we were on our way to Amsterdam.
The porters delivered our bags to our rooms and we had around 45mins to refresh before we were taken into the city to look around.
We were taken on a nice canal cruise and Roland our Cruise guide pointed out may sights of the city and told us a lot of history. We then went or a walk through the”Red light District” the girls rent windows and “advertise” their “goods” (Hey I am trying to be delicate.. my Mother is reading this !!! hahaha)
Roland explained that, literally this is where we get the term “Window Shopping” from.
We got back to the coach and were returned to the hotel at around 10:00pm. It was a long day, so I was very grateful that I had a quiet day the day before. We are up at 7:00 tomorrow and on to Germany.
Had a bit of a sleep in today and pottered round leisurely this morning. I over-did it a bit yesterday, so a slow day is definitely in order.
I packed my case, had a long shower, made breakfast and checked out at 10:00 It was nice cool morning again (about 10 degrees)
I asked at reception about a taxi to take me to my next hotel, and was told that taxis were very frequently passing out the front and it would be easy to flag one down. It was 🙂 and in just a couple of minutes I was in a cab and on my way to the DoubleTree Hotel in Islington.
The trip took about 20 minutes and cost £13.60, I gave the cabbie £15.00 and he seemed really surprised when I said keep the change. Maybe they don’t tip cabs much here.
Checking into the DoubleTree was a surprise as the lady handed me a warm chocolate chip cookie! I can honestly say I have never been given a cookie at check-in anywhere!! You can read about the cookie on the Doubletree website http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/about/cookie.html
After explaining where my room was, the receptionist told me where to find the Trafalgar rep in the lounge area. I went an introduced myself and received my tour information, along with the news that there was a wake-up call booked for 3:45AM!! Now I was glad that I had planned a “nothing day”
I went up to my room, settled in, had a nice long skype chat with Mick, ordered a late lunch from the room service menu watched some TV and pulled the curtains so it was nice and dark and went to bed around 7:30pm.
I must have needed the sleep as I slept straight through until just before 2:30am.
I got up made myself a cup of tea and wrote this blog entry before a shower and and I am ready for the next adventure.
Amsterdam this afternoon 🙂
Hyde Park Suites. The building where reception was.
A big day of sightseeing today as today is my last day before I meet up with the Trafalgar tour people tomorrow afternoon.
Hopping on the train I headed to Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately it was a bit grey and drizzly so the photos are not great :(. It was amazing to see the scale of the buildings and the well thought out design of the city.
Walking through the magnificent Admiralty Arch, I found a statue of Captain James Cook. On a fine day, you can see straight down The Mall to the gates of Buckingham Palace, but today there was too much traffic and too much rain 🙁
I headed towards Piccadilly Circus and browsed the many shops on the way. The huge neon signs at Piccadilly are in sharp contrast to the old stone buildings.
Walking up Oxford Street I came across the Selfridges Department store. A quick browse at the “unaffordable luxury” was interesting. I came across the Food Hall and Meat Mart. Wagyu Rib Eye for “just” £125 per kilo (approx $230) or a Rack of Lamb at £34.50 per kilo ($63 00) In the vege mart I saw an odd French cauliflower. It was bright yellow!!!!
Leaving Selfridges, I made my way to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard. I knew there would be heaps of people and the crowd coupled with a sea of umbrellas meant I really didn’t see much at all. I could get glimpses of the guards and of course could hear the bands as they marched their way around. It starting raining a bit heavier, so I decided to head towards the Royal Mews.
The Royal Mews are where the Royal coaches and horses “live” An informative audio guide was available and I enjoyed learning about the elaborate coach, the horses and riders. The last coach in the tour was the stunning Diamond Jubilee Coach, which was a gift from Australia to the Queen. I had previously seen an ABC documentary on the man who built this amazing coach. When he pitched the idea to John Howard, it was met with resistance, but he persisted. John Howard finally relented and asked the Queen if she would accept a coach as a gift. She agreed on the proviso that it did not cost the Australia tax-payer any money. So that ruled out any government funding. The coach builder raised the funds and it took 8 hears to build the coach. As it the newest coach, it is the most comfortable and has become the Queens favourite.
Finishing at the Mews, I headed back through St James’ Park to Westminster Abbey.WOW words just cannot express what an amazing place Westminster Abbey is. So much history, it is hard to comprehend that the building is nearly 1000 years old. The floor is covered in tombstones and the walls lined with so many monuments. Again a very informative audio guide was available, this one narrated by the actor Jeremy Irons.
After the Westminster Abbey, I hopped on the underground and headed for Harrods. Harrods is, of course, over the top commercialism at its finest :). I did notice that the cash registers were ringing regularly.
Back on the train and back to the hotel and ready for an early night. I remembered to wear my pedometer today and clocked up 13896 steps!!! and 9.71 km . No wonder that my feet are tired :-).
Started the day with a breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked in the apartment
I organized what train I needed to get to the first point of my day sightseeing – Big Ben
Checking the weather app on my phone I was happy to see it was 4 degrees at 8:00am. So jeans, boots, scarf and gloves on, I headed out.
A quick train journey and I emerged from the Westminster Underground station right at the base of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the Westminster bridge.
Returning back towards Big Ben, I headed to the Westminster Pier to do a Thames river cruise that took me past a number of sights before stopping at the Tower of London.
The captain on the boat had a humorous commentary as we travelled up the river. One funny story involves the building of the former OXO gravy/stock cube company. None of the commercial buildings along the river were allowed any advertising. The planners of the building applied for some round windows and some square windows. Consequently the placement of these windows happen to spell the name of the company 🙂
The Tower of London was a fascinating look into the sometimes dark past of London. There was an audio tour that guided me along the exhibitions.
After the Tower of London tour, I headed back to the River Cruise for the return back to Westminster and home.
It ended up being a top of 16 and I carried my cardigan, gloves and scarf more than I wore them 🙂
Big Ben
House of Parliament & Big Ben
House of Parliament , Big Ben & Westminster bridge
London Eye
Red Phone Box…Dr Who or Superman??
River Cruise Boat
Tower Bridge
Ceramic poppy display at the Tower of London. ach of these poppies represent a British soldier who died in WW1
OXO Building Not signage …just windows 🙂
Random..Not quite sure why there is a glass of white wine in a police box ????
This is a re-run of the entry that I stupidly deleted. How do you accidently delete an entry you may ask? well…I am using my phone camera for the photos in this blog, so I have the Travel Pod app on my phone as well as here on the ipad. When I take photos, I upload them through the phone app, then finish the entry on the iPad. Uploading the video of Big ben caused the phone app to crash and when I reset the app, it deleted the entry from the day before because I had not synced to save it 🙁 ….Now I know the importance of syncing 🙂
Anyway……Abu Dhabi to London.After a very pleasant stay in the superbly appointed lounge in Abu Dhabi I I boarded the last leg of my journey. Settling in (and having that almost obligatory glass of Champagne), the cabin crew came around to take our breakfast orders . My plan for this flight was to have a drink than settle down for a good sleep – breakfast – then arrive in London at 7:00am.
Not long after we boarded, the Captain announced that we were to be delayed approx 45mins as the baggage handlers had been a bit rough and had damaged a wall in the cargo bay and they were awaiting an engineer to came to make repairs. Given that it was now 2:00am, I am sure somebody was NOT happy :).
While I was waiting, I watched some TV shows on my iPad and had another Champagne (well it would be rude to refuse 🙂 ) Soon enough we took off and my sleep/breakfast plan worked perfectly. I woke up at just before 5:00am London time, went and freshened up and my breakfast arrived.
I had ordered the Full English breakfast (sausage, egg, tomato, potato, mushroom, baked beans, toast and croissants) and a cup of tea. YUMM I was hungry so asked if I could have just another sausage and scrambled egg. Of course it was no trouble.
With the take off delay, we arrived at Heathrow at around 8:00am. The airport was very quiet, and I breezed through customs, collected my suitcase and made my way to the Etihad desk where my driver was waiting.
A 40min drive and I arrived at the Hyde Park Suites which was to be home for the next 3 nights. as I couldn’t get into the room until 2:00, the reception lady checked me in and showed me where I could leave my luggage, and I headed out to discover the neighbourhood.
You may guess the “Hyde Park Suites” is very close by Hyde Park. I had a walk through the park and had a good look through Kensington Palace. I got there just in time to tag along on a guided tour with an “explainer” after the house tour, I had a look around the current display they have of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana’s fashion from the past 50 years.
Heading back to the Hotel, I got to my room and unpacked. The Hyde Park Suites is a series of terrace houses that have been made into apartments.
The reception is in building 55 ad my apartment is in building 32 the apartment is perfectly adequate for my night stay, with a small kitchen, comfy bed, free wifi, and a great shower.
After unpacking, I went out again to stock up on the basics (bacon, eggs, tea bags, milk, some meat and veges)
I had read the reviews on Tripadvisor and thought it looked OK. Honestly, some people must live in 5star mansions if they think this is not fine. I often wonder why people complain, we they have obviously gone the budget route for a hotel. If they wanted 5 star, they should have booked the Hilton or the Savoy. (both within walking distance from here)
I got back, watched some TV made dinner and settled in for a reasonably early night.
Menu
Breakfast
Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace
Hyde Park Suites
Kitchen
Kitchen
Fashion exhibition, Kensington Palace
This was one of the Queen’ s displays . There are explanations of the designers as well as photos of when each gown was worn.
