The Kindness of Strangers and Medieval History...

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NOTES FROM YESTERDAY: My final step count was 15,865. Yay me...blessings on my feet! Also there was a comment made on the blog yesterday that I thought more of you might be interested in concerning bathroom facilities when you are out and about: Every bathroom here, in the older buildings especially, are ALWAYS upstairs or downstairs using winding steps like they have in the turrets of castles. Maybe because you can fight those trying to jump the line with your nonexistent sword? THEN the stall is so small you have to be a contortionist to navigate the process! It’s all fun! We are always thankful just to have found one however. As a side note to a couple of my dear sisters in law (and you know who you are!) the toilet paper here for the most part is thick and stiff. You would love it! (Private family joke there.)

In passing: the bathrooms here in the main have been a learning experience. The water turn ones are different in each hotel and it usually takes both of us to figure out how to operate them. We aren’t the only ones as we have heard conversations within our tour group commenting on the same thing.

I am past the no wash cloths thing (got them on most of our hotels here) but am still puzzled by the hugely DEEP bathtubs. Apparently the English love to take tub baths and take very deep ones. The outside wall of the tub on most of them have come almost to my hip. It gets really awkward when there are no grab bars. No mind pictures please! Also, along with the usual no wash cloths thing goes the monstrously outsized bath towels. I have had beach towels smaller.

I in no way want to sound as if I am complaining. If things weren’t different in other countries, there would be no reason to travel would there? We have been having a fabulous time and have found the English to be very kind and helpful. Many we have met have a very dry and funny sense of humor that slips up on your blind side every once in awhile. Yesterday one of the police officers who was helping us find our way was actually a guard on duty at the back side of Clarence House (home of the Queen Mother who passed away several years ago) which is on the Buckingham Palace grounds. He chatted with us for 15 minutes at least, and gave us some of the skinny on the Royals that live and work there. He thinks the Queen works very hard, the Queen Mum was very nice, Prince Charles is a twit, Donald Trump was rude being late to visit the Queen, and that Barack Obama was a very nice chap. That was a fun conversation for sure.

Now on to less intimate matters. Since our tour ended yesterday, and our room reservations for the next two nights were not arranged by the tour company, we had to change rooms today. The hotel has been most accommodating and all we would had to do would be pack our suitcases, leave them in our old room and go on about our activities. As it turned out, just before we were ready to vacate our room we got a call from the front desk to not only let us know not only that our room was ready but that we had THREE upgrades to a suite on the ninth floor! We had had a fun conversation downstairs at the desk the other evening with who turned out to be the front desk manager. She kidded around with us and said she would upgrade our room for us. We thought she was just being funny, but it would seem not. Just goes to show you that it pays to be nice to people as you go along.

8:49 Monday evening....WHEW!! We have had a LONG, LONG day! I got 17,639 steps! Part of it was due to a “long cut” (Kim and Laura well know what THAT means!) which added more to the total that we would have much better have done without! At any rate, we finally made it to Winchester Abbey where we entered a long line which moved fairly quickly. We enjoyed this Abbey very much but it was more than loaded with tombs, monuments, chapels, statues, and memorials. I did accidentally take a couple of pictures there before I realized they were not permitte. Mike, we have tickets for St. Paul’s tomorrow. John is about over Cathedrals by the way. From there we went (sadly enough) to McDonalds again this time for a frappe. After that, we did the London Eye, thanks to rather inappropriate nudging from our younger daughter. We plan to revise our wills when we get home, by the way. Just Saying...

It really was a fun ride which we finished around 4:00. From The Eye we walked back over a mile towards our hotel. MK, this one is for you...we then stood in a line for an hour and a half with the wind blowing and steadily dropping temps trying to get tickets to Hamilton tonight. Missed it by one! From there, with frozen feet and stiff legs we walked to a FANTASTIC local pizza place for a really good pizza and a local light ale. It was so good that it made it easier to take our creaking bodies back to our 9th floor view of London!

By the way, if I hadn’t written the bulk of this this morning you wouldn’t be getting much of a blog. I haven’t uploaded today’s pictures yet and may leave them uncaptioned until tomorrow! If you find them uncaptioned, look back tomorrow!

PS...got it done! Enjoy!

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Photos

Parliament AKA Westminster Palace
This was originally built as a Royal Palace. Henrty the 8th was the last monarch to live there. Fantastically beautiful building

Comments

[Lora Carbary]

Glad you took the Eye the pictures were awesome
Glad you both are doing so well and taking in the sights and doing all those steps you both are amazing to me. I also enjoyed everything you have posted. Stay safe. Hugs

[D. Crip]

You did the eye!!
You are certainly getting around London! When you go to St. Paul's you can climb up the zillion stairs to the whispering gallery, we did it years ago and it really does work, so don't use a cuss word. Ha! Glad you are enjoying one of our fav cities. I remember walking until we were almost groaning. Are you going to Hampton Court? Love that place!

[Pam K]

The London Eye. U were smart to take it the time of day u did. We were up there around dusk and didn't see a thing other than lights but it was still nice. Great pics. Love W Abbey. Didn't have enough time there. I must go back.

[Keep Smiling]

The kindness of strangers
Yes, we Brits are sometimes eccentric and it's easy to confuse Winchester with Westminster, particularly after 17,639 steps. As I'm a stranger, may I kindly just confirm our sense of humour by mentioning the following: * Winchester is in the county of Hampshire about 70 miles from Westminster and it doesn't have an Abbey or a Palace. * What you call 'wash cloths', we call 'face cloths' for some unknown reason. * Those outsized bath towels, we call bath sheets (aren't they great?). * We have ridiculously large bath tubs in hotels to justify the outrageous prices charged for a room (most of us have smaller tubs or shower cubicles in our homes) . * Clarence House is the London residence of that twit, our future King, Charles and his former mistress, now his unattractive wife, Camilla. * Oh, and the modern statue that you had no idea about is called the Robot Sculpture - it's by the late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (who, despite the Italian name, was Scottish) and hiding inside it is a ventilation shaft for the Victoria Line tube below. I told you we were eccentric!

[DWLPtravelkids]

British humor...
That is funny! I hope I have corrected my error on Westminster vs Winchester on the blog. The problem happens, I think, because I keep hearing Roger Miller’s song, Winchester Cathedral in my head...now maybe it will drive you crazy to!! Seriously Mike, thanks for pointing out my editing mistake. John usually proofreads but I neglected to give him my final copy that evening. Mea Culpa! We have loved visiting your beautiful country. This has been a wonderful trip. Wish we could have met somewhere along the way.

[Mike]

Last Full Day
Thanks for the shout out to me and Kim in your blog. You got a nice view of the top of St Paul’s from the top of the London Eye (see picture 22). Enjoy you last day touring. We loved walking in London - the history, the cool cabs, the red double-decker buses. Just have a great time whatever you decide to do. On our last day, Kim decided we didn’t need to do the British Museum. She said she would let me see it next time. :)

[KC]

Towels and Tubs
Glad you did the eye! See it was a beautiful view and you didn’t die! Have fun on your last day. Hopefully the Hurricane going across the south doesn’t postpone flights. Jealous that we had no tubs in London or Paris. But I did love the huge bath towels. We were the couple that always asked for washcloths and a top sheet. They loved us. :-)

[Home and Away]

European toilets and bath tubs...
In southern Italy almost every toilet, other than our hotel room, was without a toilet seat. I was going to put toilet paper on the ceramic surface, but discovered no toilet paper. English bath tubs - The morning I was to catch a flight home from Heathrow, I got stuck in the bath tub as it was so deep and I had nothing to push up against. I thought I would miss my flight. Finally, I threw my large towel around the water faucets and pulled my self up.