2009-09-01 Thursday: Kew Gardens

We took the train to the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens and spent the whole day there. We all considered it our best day so far.

2009-08-31 Wednesday: London

We saw more top ten sights of London today. We went to St Paul’s Cathedral first. Somehow we ended up taking a tour with Christopher Wren himself (he built St. Paul’s after the great fire of London). We thoroughly enjoyed his presentation and after 2 hours we wanted more, but we had a date at Buckingham palace so off we went. The queen had invited us for a palace tour and we went through her state-rooms and enjoyed her garden. We were quite busy so we didn’t stay for supper.

2009-08-30 Tuesday: London

We did London today. We toured Westminster Abbey in the morning. We had packed a lunch which we ate in St. James Park. In the afternoon we visited the National Gallery and then went shopping on Regent Street. I got tired first and needed a beer to revive me, and then the girls hit the wall. We made it to Oxford Street and then took the bus home. The London transit system is good – we can go from anywhere to anywhere and it doesn’t cost much with an Oyster Card.

2008-08-29 Monday: England Clapham Junction

The plane took-off on time and we landed early because of tail winds from Hurricane Irene. By noon we were in Caroline’s flat. We didn’t want to sleep so we did a tour of Clapham Junction. We spent a lot of time looking for a bicycle rental place that doesn’t seem to exist, visited 2 pubs, and did a tour of Battersea Park. The beer in the Falcon was the best.

First Day - Hurricane Irene

Our daughter Caroline is in working in London until July 2012. We had planned on visiting her in May along with Joan’s sister Barb. Unfortunately the trip was cancelled due to medical problems. Since May, Joan has had a throat operation and I had a hip replacement. Now that we’re healthy we rebooked the trip for September. We leave Aug 28th and return September 25. We will spend a week in London and then 4 days in Edinburgh. We return to London for a few days. Barb will fly home on Sept 13 and we fly to Germany for a week. We will stay with friends in Kronberg and Wulfrath before returning to London.

2008-08-28 Sunday: Tonight we fly to London to begin our trip to Europe. We are watching the weather forecast as Hurricane Irene is scheduled to hit Montreal at the same time our flight is due to take off. So far it is windy, but not raining in Montreal.
Barb drove into Montreal last night and is looking forward to an early morning walk in a different place every morning. Tim is looking forward to biking in the London traffic.