SUNDAY, JULY 28 AND MONDAY JULY 29, 2013

I'm already behind in my blog -- sorry!  Carol, this is for you!

On Sunday our friends, Kema and Steve, were going to drive us to the airport but, instead, they were at the hospital awaiting the birth of their new grandson, Colton.  Luckily our friend, Joseph, was able to drive us there. We checked in and waited in the security line for about 30 minutes.  The airport was very busy.  We decided to eat dinner before boarding (no airplane food for us) so we had an early dinner at Chili's.  

We boarded at 6:20 p.m. and our plane left promptly at 7:05.  We weren't able to get exit row seats and there were no upgrades available, but we did have two seats by ourselves on the left side of the plane so that was good.  We settled in and I fell asleep and slept most of the way to London.  David said he slept on and off.  We had a great tail wind so our flight landed an hour early, at 7:05 a.m.  We took a taxi to our hotel, The May Fair, which was recommended to us by our friends, Leslie and Jason.  It is in the West End which is a great location.  We can walk across Green Park and be at Buckingham Palace in five minutes.  But no reason to go there . . . the Queen is on holiday in Scotland and Princess Kate, Prince William and Baby George are at her parents home currently.  

We were checked in at The May Fair Hotel by the lovely Agnes and she upgraded us to a nicer room!  We put our things away and headed out to have an early lunch.  The weather was fantastic -- mostly sunny and in the 70s.  We walked over to Whitehorse Street in Old Mayfair and ate at a cafe named Caffe In, where the big windows were open so we felt like we were sitting outside.  David had vegetarian lasagna and I had chicken caesar salad.  Note to Sheryl, the cafe had Diet Coke as opposed to Coke Light so I was very happy.  

After lunch we decided to take the Big Bus Tour.  Our friend, Noel, recommended that we take a bus/boat tour just to get our bearings.  David and I have both been to London before so we didn't really want to do the typical sightseeing.  Since the weather was very nice we sat on the upper, uncovered level of the bus and enjoyed the tour guide's commentary.  

We got off the bus at the Tower of London stop and took the boat tour on the Thames back to the stop where the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben are.  The boat guide told us that Big Ben is named after the designer of the tower.  His real name is Richard Benjamin so you see why they named it Big Ben instead of Big Dick.  David tipped the tour guide just because of that joke.    

We continued on the Big Bus Tour until it returned us to the Green Park stop.  While on the tour we went by Hamley's, the largest toy store in London.  David was happy to see it because it was one of his destinations here.  He wanted to see their collection of toy soldiers.  We noted that it wasn't far from our hotel.

We returned to our hotel and relaxed a bit and headed to the lobby to have a drink at the bar.  It was advertised that they have over 40 speciality cocktails!  I wanted to try them all but David was a wet blanket and said we could only have one drink.  I had a cosmopolitan and he had a gin and tonic.  The bar was quiet and we had a nice table so we stayed for another drink.  Then we decided we were too tired to go out for dinner so we ate in the bar.  I had a delicious caprese salad that was very fresh and good.  Along with the tomatoes, mozzarella and basil it also had avocado.  David had an interesting vegetarian dish that had hummus, baba ghanoush and grilled vegetables with flat bread.   He loved it.  

It had been a long day so we headed to bed to get some much-needed sleep.  But noooooo!  Our air conditioning (in our fabulous up-graded room) wasn't working and it was 28 c or 82.5 f.  Too hot for me.  We called the front desk and talked to maintenance and the guy said he would adjust it on the computer.  That didn't work so we called maintenance again and a man came to our room and manually re-set the system and cleaned the filter.  But that didn't work either.  So we had to change rooms.  Our new room was very cool (temperature-wise)  but it wasn't as nice as the first room.  The bathroom was much smaller and it only had one very small window.  We were exhausted so we decided to get some sleep and deal with it in the morning.