The Amazing Race in London

It was a beautiful day today in London. The temperature high of the day was around 65 degrees and a bit windy at times. Since we arrived late last night we didn’t have a chance to book a tour for today in advance. At breakfast this morning in our hotel, The Adare Hotel, we were telling one of the other hotel guests that we weren’t sure as to what we were going to do today. Since he knows the area, he suggested, since the hotel is so close to many tourist attractions and since it was a beautiful day, to take a walk down Hyde Park along the lake and then we’ll come across Harrod’s Department store, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abby. So that is just what we did and loved every minute of it. Except we didn’t stop walking around after visiting Westminster Abby. We kept walking down past Big Ben, saw and rode the Eye of London (which is a huge Ferris wheel that is right on The Thames River and overlooks the whole city of London. What a great opportunity for me to take pictures today. And I took close to 200 pictures. I’m in the process of setting up an account with Ofoto.com to link to this site. When I do, I’ll post our pictures. We also visited St. Paul’s Cathedral, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which was interesting and headed to China town for some dinner.



After that we were too pooped to do much else since most of the day we traveled by foot except toward the end of the day we took the underground lines. It’s amazing how easy it is to use London’s Underground system compared to NYC’s Metro Subway system. We were amazed at how much we saw today on foot. I told Robert that I felt like we were on the Amazing Race today since we did and saw so much in one day. The most memorable part of today was when Robert kept calling me Mummy throughout the day. Of course he was pronouncing it like the English people here. We noticed many differences in the way these English people express themselves and communicate. Here are some of the terms or phrases that we heard today: Mind your head (Watch your head), or Mind your step (watch your step), Lift (Elevator), Lile (little), Mum (Mom), Cheerio (Goodbye). It was an absolute stunningly lovely day.



Everything we’ve purchased here in London is very expensive. To give you an example, we paid 12 pounds or about $24.00 for 2 sandwiches, 1 bottled water, 1 juice and one slice of carrot cake for lunch today. After we arrived back at our hotel this evening, we walked down the street to get some ice cream. For 2 bowls of homemade ice cream, which was very good, with a little bit of whipped cream and 2 bottles of water, we paid 9 pounds or $18.00. Thank goodness we’ll only be here for a few days.



Tomorrow we are going to book a tour possibly to visit the Windsor Castle, Stone Hedge and The Baths. Signing off for now. We’re exhausted. We walked all over London today and our feet, legs and back are feeling it right now. Robert and I were talking about how much we walked today and we both agreed that this is like training week before we go to Ukraine for our children. From what we hear, you walk quite a lot when you are in Ukraine. So we’ll be ready to roll once Friday comes…this is just a warm up session. We hope all is well with everyone at home. Feel free to email us if you’d like at rkmillilo@msn.com. We’d love to hear what and how you all are doing. Cheerio for now.