Friday Sept 21 – Last Full Day in London

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Today is our last full day in London, but we don’t have any special site-seeing planned. We had a second evening activity yesterday, so we were a little tired and wanted to have time to rest before we join the ship tomorrow. We slept until almost 9:00 and then went down to have a breakfast. After our minimal dinner yesterday, we were both kind of hungry. Truth be told, David woke up hungry about 1:30 in the morning and ate our final Snickers Bar from the stash of snacks we had in the room. That might sound like a commercial, but that did the trick and he was able to go back to sleep again.

After breakfast we went back to the room. We didn’t want to go anywhere very distant to go eat and we decided didn’t want another Costa lunch of sandwiches, so we would have “linner” instead and get a large pizza sometime during the late-afternoon. Once we get back to the ship we will start eating on a more conventional schedule, but not yet.

David went for a walk this morning to take a couple of pictures around the area and to do some last minute shopping. He is finally beginning to get the knack of looking the opposite direction before stepping off a curb into traffic. At many of the intersections they have instructions to look left or right before proceeding into the traffic. We have noticed that traffic can be pretty crazy here, but the pedestrians seem to follow the rules and wait for the lights to change and the drivers don’t generally run through lights. The cars (at least the taxis we’ve used) take turns in merging and give the other drivers a chance to turn/weave between the lanes as appropriate. It could be a real mess but they seem to make it work. That’s not what we’ve seen in some other places (New York, Rome, and Paris all come to mind).

We can take two bottles of wine on board the ship with us, so David walked down to the grocery store and got them. Since we will have a “take away” pizza in the room, he also got one last genuine bottle of English beer too. While he was walking he passed a “handyman store” where he was able to get Janet an alligator clip to replace the one she had lost from her knitting. Now she will be able to knit again with her new friends on the ship.

The weather today was the coolest we’ve had all week. It was sunny most of the time (one short rain shower) but fairly windy and cool enough that David wanted a jacket when outside. But in total we have had pretty nice weather for our visit to London.

Back in the room, Janet had been doing one of her other needlework projects and watching some more British TV. Mostly we have tuned into trivia game shows, but every so often we get exposed to the hot topic in British politics – Brexit. It reminds us how happy we are to be away from the US political commentaries, but they have their own version here. It seems the clock is running down for UK to reach an agreement for a friendly exit from the EU. Everyone (including our taxi driver last night) has an opinion but the latest formal offer seems to be in trouble regarding how it deals with the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. We remember from our Athens cruise that the Gibraltar/Spain border was a big concern down there, but maybe it’s not such a hot topic for the politicians now.

Anyway, we got started with the packing of the suitcases. A lot of stuff went in pretty quickly and we will be able to sort it all out when we get on the ship again. We will need to finish the packing tomorrow morning, but unlike the last night on the ships, nobody is going to collect our suitcases tonight. We will have to get them all to the transfer point tomorrow where we will hand them off to the Princess staff.

We still had some sodas and chips in the room, so we were snacking during the afternoon. We might take a couple of cans with us or just leave them behind – we will decide tomorrow. The potato chips are pretty tasty, but the idea of bringing food onto a cruise ship just seems a bit silly – they will have PLENTY for us to eat. Then Janet settled down for an afternoon nap and David went down to the breakfast area to work on the photos and to start reading a new book.

While downstairs David overheard the manager and the owner’s accountant talking. Afterwards David asked how long the hotel has been open. The answer is only since February. They plan to expand by buying out the apartment buildings on each side and will make it larger in the future. We certainly have to say that it has been a nice place and the people have been extremely helpful and friendly. The room isn’t any larger than a cabin on the ship, although the bathroom is a little bigger. The hotel is located further from Central London than we would probably want to stay if we come back again, but it has been a nice quiet place for us this week.

About 4:30 David went over to the Pizza Express place and got us a Pepperoni Pizza to go – Patterson would have liked it. We ate in the “breakfast room” and David had his London’s Pride pint of beer and Janet had a 7-Up. Then we went back to the room and had a moment of panic when we could not find the instructions for the next morning. But Janet found them and we are calm again – we have a plan for the morning.

We did all but the final packing and have settled in for the evening.

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Photos

Tube Station
High Street Kensington - near us