My mother, sister, and I have arrived in London safely for the first leg of our Great Britain Excursion. We’re doing a Trafalgar tour through AAA cuz we wanted Easy but Fun. Yesterday, dad dropped us off at the airport and we flew to Charlotte and then on to Heathrow. The flight from Charlotte was delayed about an hour, so we wound up getting into London an hour later than intended. And the gentleman who picked us up for Trafalgar had even more issues with his morning than we did!

However, we got to the Riverside Park Plaza Hotel on the Albert Embankment and then headed off to the Coca Cola London Eye since it was such a beautiful day. I feel sorry for the folks who purchased Fast Passes today since we only waited 15 minutes to get into our carriage. And we were on the ferris wheel for about twice that length of time.

Our room wasn’t going to be ready till 2pm, so we walked toward Trafalgar Square (no relation to the travel company) and wound up popping into The Clarence, a pub just south of the square. Lunch there was lovely. I had steak & ale pie with mashed potatoes and onion gravy. Amy had fish & chips and mushy peas. And mum had a cheeseburger and fries. Everything was yummy. I had cider, Amy an ale, and mum wine.

We returned to the hotel for a much needed rest. But we didn’t want to nap for long or else we’d not be able to sleep tonight. So we just did so for an hour, then we headed off to Harrods. Or as mom wound up calling it, The London Deathmarch. (She said she would have been disappointed if I’d not gotten a London Deathmarch in this trip.) Yeah, so I had a few issues with the mini-map not having the smaller street details, underestimating how long the walk would be, and then having my GPS have kittens while trying to figure out where we were while walking. So it might have taken 2 hours to get to Harrods. But we did!

In previous trips, I’d fallen in love with the Chocolate Bar, a little place to buy hot chcolate and other yummy things. Well, Godiva now runs it, and it’s a bigger place. But the chocolate stuff is still yummy. We split a tomato & mozzarella panini and each had one of their Chilled Chocolixirs (Amy and I opted for dark, mom got milk choc). Was very decadent and wound up filling us enough for supper.

Rather than suffer through another Deathmarch, we took the tube back. Vauxhall station is, I think, the nearest to the hotel. And the walk back from the station was very pleasant and an intreesting walk. I’m really not used to staying in high quality hotels in London.

Later tonight, we went down to the Chino Latino bar in the hotel. Amy recommended a Pimm’s cup to me and we each ordered one, while mom got the bar’s elderflower margarita. The drinks were tasty and they brought us some olives and some crunchy & spicy knurdles that were very tasty. Since we figured dad was out at a bar in Ohio while we were in a bar in Londond, we called him on the offchance that he had his cell phone with him. He did, so we chatted briefly and that just made the night even nicer.

Now Amy is writing in her journal and I am writing in mine and mom is already in her bed. Bed sounds good. Since I didn’t sleep on the flight, I REALLY hope I can sleep tonight!