1st Day London

Actually a continuation of Flight Day because I never went to bed till 11pm ! I think I was up for 27 hrs - felt amazingly good for that actually. Entertained by our tour director (Michael Doughty) on the the ride back to the hotel. Love the accent. He will turn out to be a fabulous guide.

After a brief get together back at the hotel (rooms weren't ready at 10am), I headed out on my own through Hyde Park , stopping briefly at the Speaker's Corner where anybody can stand u and rant and rave about their favorite topic. Quite interesting - they got into some spirited discussions - would have liked to stay longer , but the shopping Mecca of Harrod's awaits, so I am off.

Lot of people out in the park today - nice way to spend a Sunday. Harrod's is awesome - you could spend a month in here and still miss half the stuff - never had any idea where I was but the food displays were awesome!

Decided I might walk down to the London Eye and started off that way. Walked and walked and walked and decided that I was crazy. Stopped at a neat little restaurant along the way and had a Mediterranean panini - very tasty. That gave me a bit more energy. Finally decided the Eye was going to be too far and went to Buckingham Palace instead. Looks the same way it looked 40 some odd years ago, when I was last here. After a few pics, took the hike up alongside the east side of Hyde Park back to the hotel.

Afraid to go asleep, talked some via Facebook video chat with my wife - worked surprisingly well. Of a technical note, my AAA adapter plugs for England didn't work properly in their socket - will have to investigate that further. (as it turns out, I wasn't flipping up the 3rd prong - well , duh...) Didn't really matter in this hotel, as fortunately, plenty of USB sockets in the room and even 1 American plug-in. Also of interest, is that as you enter the room, the key card you use for the outer door, is also used to slip into a key card slot just inside the door. That allows you to turn the lights on - when you leave, you take the key card out and the lights go out - geez, not sure if I've seen this in the States, but maybe my Motel 6's just don't offer that quite yet. LOL

Went for drinks around 5 - few glasses of the ol' vino ya know - met the rest of the AAA crews from the Midwest and and Florida - moved on to dinner (steak dinner) - then a group of us decided we were going to the London Eye at night. So we hailed a few taxis and headed that way (hell of a lot easier than walking!). One of the Insight directors was kind enough to foot the bill for all of us which was incredibly generous as it's about 30+ Pounds to ride it. Great views of the skyline at night - the Eye moves very slowly - you almost wouldn't know you were moving at all.

Finally grabbed some more coffee and headed back to the hotel, where it took no time at all to crash.Read more