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Published: March 11th 2010
A wonderful beginning...
Me on hold with Delta Airlines for a hour and a half. April looking thrilled.The beginning of honeymoon number two... stay tuned for updates
Day 1: Trip is starting off with a bang already. Checked in to SeaTac two and a half hours early, trying to do the right thing for international flights, just to have the plane delayed for an hour and a half. Of course, this caused us to miss our connection from JFK to London Heathrow leaving us stranded in New York for who knows how long. Our confirmed flight isn't until Sunday night (it is two in the morning on Saturday right now.) If we're lucky we will be able to change airlines and get out of here this morning but it's not looking good so far. We are also standby for a flight tonight but who knows how that will go. Now I'm not just worried about when we're going to get there I'm also worried about the airlines losing our luggage... Oh what a wonderful beginning.
Day 2: So we spent the night at the airport trying to get everything straightened out and the best Delta could do for us was get us an Air France flight that leaves out tonight (Saturday) for Paris, then connects to
Paris CDG airport
same stuck feeling, different place London. Only set back a day behind so far. Lets keep our fingers crossed that we don't have any other major problems along the way... It has been quite the long night and day trying to get this all settled and Delta has not been a big help at all. I think it is time to find a new airline.
*UPDATE* Not only did we have one more major problem, we had two. Our Air France flight was canceled due to high winds at JFK, luckily, after standing in line at Air France's counter for a couple of hours, we were able to get placed standby for another flight which had been very delayed coming into JFK because of the weather. We got our baggage checked in for the new flight, made it back through security, waited at the gate and finally got off the ground in New York at 2am Sunday morning feeling like we were leaving our problems behind us... to early for that apparently.
We landed in Paris, made our way through the security check point, stopped at the restrooms for a quick second (believing we had almost an hour layover,) and then made our
London Baby!!!
Us and Big Ben way down to our gate, just in time to find it closed and boarding complete... OOPS, at least we have no one to blame but ourselves on this one. After re-scheduling our connection, we finally made out way to London and as one final kick while we were down only half of our luggage made it with us. What a trip this has been but we are finally in London, checked into our hotel and we are supposed to be getting our luggage delivered to the hotel tomorrow by 12. Here's to keeping our fingers crossed.
Day 3-1: Thank god for a real bed and a shower. It has been nice to get some sleep and cleaned up and we are looking forward to our day slumming around London.
Day3-2: Just got in from a long day of walking/ riding around London. Had a lot of fun seeing the sights. We stopped and checked out the usuals; London Eye, Parliament Building, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the shopping district. Besides those we also went in and got a lot of good pictures of the Westminster Cathedral, we saw the Queen Victoria Memorial, went in the National
Gallery and checked out some paintings by Monet, Van Gogh and other famous artists of their time, and we also checked out Cleopatra's Needle which was made in Egypt in 1819 by the ruler, at the time, Sudan Muhammad Ali and later transported to London in 1877.
Tomorrow's plans consist of going to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge and then leaving the city and seeing some of the surrounding sights, then it is off to France the next day. Still haven't received our luggage from the airport, they say it arrived in London already and it was supposedly en-route to us when I called but it never showed up. Will have to call again in the morning to see what the deal is. Hopefully we can have this straightened out by tomorrow...
Day 4-1: Just woke up, made a few calls and finally received our luggage. It is nice to have some more socks and our hygiene products. Those hotel shampoos and soaps really suck. Another day of wandering around aimlessly ahead of us, should be a blast.
Day 4-2: So today, after a small breakfast we took the tubes over to the Tower
View from our balconey
The tower flashes strobe lights every hour after dusk for 5 minutes of London/ Tower Bridge. They had a lot of construction going on inside the Tower of London, working on the White Tower, and because of that they didn't have a lot on display inside of the tower. It definitely wasn't as cool as last time I was out here but we did at least get to go into the Jewel House and check out the crown jewels. Unfortunately, like most places around here, pictures are not allowed inside of the Jewel House so we couldn't get any photos of the jewels themselves but they are very nice. After taking some pictures around the tower I realized I left the memory card for the camera in the computer so I was only able to take a few pictures until we were able to make it back to our hotel.
We left from the hotel, picked up our car, and drove outside of London to the Windsor Castle. The castle is the oldest and largest castle still inhabited in the world. It also serves as the Queen's official residence, though she only tends to stay there on the weekends. Again, no photos are allowed inside of the castle but take it
from me it is amazing inside. Every room has its own decorating style, each one with its own unique story. It took a couple of hours to get through everything that we wanted to see and the free audio guide you get with your admission is quite informative as you walk around.
From the castle we drove to the town of Bath which is set nicely into the hills just outside of Bristol. All of the buildings in the town have the same yellow hue and are very beautiful as you drive in from the highway. It was already getting pretty late by the time we got there and we really didn't get the chance to see many of the attractions in Bath but it was still nice to drive through. From Bath we circled back around, past Stonehenge in the dark, and made our way back to London for the night. After a long day of driving I'm not really looking forward to the 4 hours of driving we have ahead of us tomorrow to get to Paris but it should be worth it in the end.
Day 5: In the morning we checked out of our
The Palais De Chaillot
from the top of the Tour Eiffel hotel, picked up our car and made our way south from London towards the chunnel to France. Our first stop was at Dover castle which is located, surprisingly enough, in Dover, England. It is situated on top of the white cliffs that Dover is known for and has a commanding presence from any direction you take into Dover. The castle has great views in all 360 degrees and was used in many wars in England to include as a Fire Command Post in World War I and as a strategic command during World War II.
After wandering around the castle grounds for a few hours we made our way to the chunnel entrance in Folkestone where we had pre-paid for a ticket on the 1450 train, though getting there early we were able to board the 1420 train and gain an extra half hour to make our way from Calais, France into Paris. That extra half hour was lost though when we drove around Calais for a half hour looking for an ATM to be able to have money for the toll road along our trip... too bad. By the time we made it to Paris it was going
Our hotel
Tour Eiffel Pullman Paris as seen from the top of the Tour Eiffel on 2000 and it took about another 45 minutes to make it to our hotel through the downtown traffic. The hotel room alone made up for the wait though as we have a gorgeous view off of our balcony of the Tour de Eiffel.
Tomorrows plan - unknown. We're kind of making it up as we go, which is nice as we aren't trying to stick to some stressful time plan and we can actually relax. We'll probably go up the tower today and then make our way around the city. Will update with photos later...
Day 6: Woke up this morning to a beautiful view of the city. Accept for the sports arena directly across the street from us everything is older architecture and gorgeous. Was reading a lot about the Tour Eiffel last night and how when it was first built the prominent people in Paris believed it to be an eyesore and, after its initial 20yr contract was up, the city was originally slated to tear it down. They ended up leaving it up for its communication value.
We left our hotel at about 0900 and went walking around the base of the Tour
Eiffel looking for a bakery to get some breakfast at. It took us a little while to find a place that was open (apparently no one works around this area until after 0930 or 1000.) After getting our breakfast we went back to the tower, waited in a 40ish minute line and bought tickets to the top.
The view is to die for. You can see all the major monuments in all directions, to include: the Arc du Triomphe, The Louvre, the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, and many others. After spending some time at the top and taking tons of pictures (April is starting to hate the camera,) we made our way back down and bought an open air bus tour pass which got us around a lot of the city, past most of the sights we wanted to see and dropped us off at the Louvre. We spent a little bit of time wandering around the Louvre and I was quite surprised that, unlike London, we could actually take pictures inside of the Louvre as long as you didn't use a flash. It was funny however to see one guy walking by who had misinterpreted the sign about
Mona Lisa
Inside the Louvre no flash photography because he was mumbling at everyone taking pictures and getting quite upset because he believed you were not allowed to take any pictures at all.
From the Louvre, we hopped back on our bus tour, made our way past Notre Dame and around a bunch more sights back to the Tour Eiffel where we got off, went back to the hotel, dropped off some stuff, took a much needed nap (almost completely adjusted to the time difference now, still feel like an old couple though....) and then made our way out souvenir shopping.
Finally, for the end of the day we ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, Paris and rode the Metro back to our hotel where we are finally crashing for the night.
Day 7: Our final full day in Paris... we spent a relaxing day riding around on the different open tour bus routes seeing most of the city. The sights weren't as nice as on the main line though. The main open tour route goes through all of the historic points in the city while the other lines mainly drove through the more modern part of the city. Not as
Feeding the birds
If you look close enough you can see the bird sitting on her hand impressive but it was a nice relaxing day, the weather was gorgeous and we didn't spend all day walking around which was a nice change of pace. Besides riding around the city, we spent some time in the morning walking through Notre Dame. The inside of the building is unbelievable. I can't get over the shear scale of everything.
We spent a little time doing some souvenir shopping, got some crepes from a stand outside (they were pretty good) and then headed back to the hotel to drop off some and get ready for dinner. Not much else to do besides pack and get ready for the trip back to London tomorrow and then the flight out the next day. Here's to hoping the flights are better than the way in.
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Dad
non-member comment
Trip from Hell
Wow! Well it looks like you are finally all set. Glad to see you are getting to see some sights. Love you. Dad