New Years Vacation in London and Paris

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5 – 6 January 2006 Thursday and Friday. As the girls didn’t start their spring semester until mid January and after New Years there were terrific bargains for combination packages of flights and hotels, we decided to take advantage of one of the deals. We booked three nights in London and three nights in Paris, with the Eurostar train between the two and airfare to London and back from Paris; all less that $1000 per person which is less that the flight alone today. Linda stayed home with Will, who had to start his spring semester right after New Years. Tamara, Rosanna and I flew to DC for a day of visiting friends before our Friday night Air France flight.

7 January 2006 Saturday. We landed in Paris early Saturday morning and had to pass through customs and immigration (because the UK is not a Schengen country) before boarding the connecting flight to London Heathrow. The lines were very long and slow, so we almost missed our flight. From Heathrow we caught the train to Paddington Station. Our hotel was right next to it, so we quickly checked in; the girls had a room to themselves. We had the rest of Saturday, and all of Sunday and Monday to see London. We took a brief siesta as we had been up for 24 hours, and then bought an Oyster card to provide us with transportation for the next three days. We caught the tube to Leicester Square to buy cheap theater tickets, and then checked out Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street before dinner in Soho and the show.

8 January 2006 Sunday. We took the tube to Tower Bridge where we joining a walking tour of the South Bank. We began our walk along the South Bank with the highlights being the Old Bailey Jail and the Globe Theater. We had a tour of the theater and learned all about Shakespearean productions. The tour ended there so we had lunch before walking across the Millennium Walking Bridge to St Paul’s Cathedral. As the weather was deteriorating we decided to spend the rest of the day indoors which is easy to do with the British Museum. After hours in the museum we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus and walked from there along Regent and Oxford Streets, window shopping all the way back to our hotel.

9 January 2006 Monday We caught the tube to Green Park and walked to Buckingham Palace, where we saw the Changing of the Guards and Horse Guards riding by, and fed the pigeons and ducks at St James Park. Next was Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. There we learned that we could see the House of Lords in session that evening. We continued down Whitehall to Traflagar Square where we had lunch at the Sherlock Holmes Pub. That afternoon we went shopping. In the evening we saw the Lords in session. It was pretty dull.

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