Tuesday Sept 18 – Second Full Day in London

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Hello. We got a note from Valerie this morning with news about Tessa’s broken arm. In the opinion of the Orthopedist, it is going to require surgery to properly repair her arm. The bones are not cooperating by themselves, so she is going to need some flexible nails inserted to keep the bones aligned correctly. The specific date has not yet been scheduled, but it should be sometime late next week. This delay will allow all the swelling to go down first and should make the healing process go more quickly. In the meantime she is able to return to school with just a splint and sling. We are sorry not to be back there to help with everything but we are praying that soon we will hear some better news.

We used the alarm feature on the television as a wake-up call this morning. We went downstairs and had pretty much the same breakfast as yesterday in the hotel dining area by their garden. Yesterday the meal didn’t agree too well with Janet, but today she was fine. She also wore her special ankle brace today and her foot felt better too. So we were off to a good start – except for Valerie’s e-mail.

It was a little breezy today, but not cold and not rainy, so we were happy with the weather. We walked up to Kensington High Street and caught a taxi down to Kensington Park. We had purchased Hop On / Hop Off tickets from the Big Bus tour group. This was about 10:00. We caught the “Blue Line” bus and started traveling around London and hearing interesting recorded information over earphones about the sights we were passing. David had gone to the open-air upper level of the double decker bus while Janet stayed on the first level where it was enclosed in glass and not windy. David never does well with earbuds but it was alright today. We could have gotten off and back on in any of the many stops, but we had planned to mostly ride, look around, and listen. After about an hour we got to Marble Arch and Mayfair, and we hopped off.

After a few minutes the “Red Line” bus arrived and we were off again (split between upstairs and downstairs). This time the tour was narrated by a lady rather than just getting recorded info. She answered questions and pointed out sights which probably would not have been on the recordings. On both buses, the top level tended to fill up, but David was lucky enough to get a seat each ride. The red route is longer and traffic was heavier so the full route lasted almost 3 hours.

Then we caught the “Blue Bus” again at Mayfair for the completion of that route which got us back to our starting point. By now it was a bit after 3:00 so we went into the Goat Tavern (a pub right beside where we were dropped off). Janet had a big plate of Scampi & Chips while David had Fish & Chips. It was very good and we were quite pleased with how our excursion had gone today. We caught another taxi back to the hotel and just had to climb the front steps to rest in our room.

Some of the more recognizable places that we saw today were: London Tower, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Big Ben (wrapped in scaffolding for repairs), Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral, Marble Arch, Trafalgar Square with Lord Nelson’s Column, Piccadilly Circus, Harrods, Buckingham Palace, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Not everything was in a good photogenic position, but David did get some photos for the blog.

Tomorrow we have a continuation of our London touring so we decided to just rest for the remainder of today. We weren’t hungry when it got to be dinner time, so we just had a couple of small snacks and decided to all it a day. We will have more to tell you tomorrow.

There may be more pictures than text today.

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