A new vacation has begun as Susan and I will be taking on Europe over the next three weeks. Full itinerary is still TBD, but the story begins in London.
Monday afternoon, we departed Louisville and made our way to London (via Dulles). We were lucky to report no travel delays or issues of any kind on our hop across the pond. However, our overnight flight into Heathrow was possibly the coldest cabin I’ve ever flown in so neither Susan nor I were able to get more than 30-60 minutes of sleep. We arrived in London at 6:20 am running on the fumes of the vacation excitement.
Once our bags were collected and England had deemed that we weren’t much of a threat at emigration, we boarded the tube and made our way into the city with the morning London commuters. After some near misdirection on both a tube transfer and on our walk through Notting Hill, we finally arrived to the Rupert’s household, my cousins and our host for the first leg of the journey. After hugs and hellos it was quickly to bed for Susan for a morning powernap while I loaded up on coffee and relaxed for a couple hours.
To attempt to kill the jetlag as quickly as possible, we knew we had to push through a long first day, which happened to be warm and sunny, so once Susan was roused the two of us grabbed a takeaway lunch at a local Italian bistro (Carluccio’s) and had a picnic in Hyde Park. Obviously, our idea was not totally original since Hyde Park was littered with other lunch-goers. After a bite and some people watching, we walked a short loop in the park before making our way back to regroup with our cousins (and Uncle Craig and Aunt Teresa who also are in town during this visit).
Henry, Kate and Tim’s son, was up from his nap so all of us took an afternoon trip to Kew for the Royal Botanical Gardens. This is a huge botanical garden somewhat on the outskirts of London proper. A variety of the gardens were in bloom so we had plenty of sights and smells to enjoy, plus we walked the canopy loop which provided some interesting treetop views (and a little swaying in the wind).
Once we’d put a few more miles into the legs, Susan and I were starting to crash pretty hard by only 6:15pm. However, we had a goal to see at least a part of the England Eurocup match in a pub so we had Craig and Teresa drop us off at one nearby the Rupert flat (The Castle) where we enjoyed a very Pub dinner (bangers and mash for myself and fish n chips for Susan), then watched all of the first 15 minutes of the soccer match before nearly falling asleep in our booth.
Leaving the pub, we arrived back at the flat in the midst of Kate’s birthday dinner so sat with the family as they finished, then enjoyed the best piece of carrot cake I’ve ever eaten (Kate’s b-day cake). I tried to soldier through the rest of the match and at least made it until I knew there was no doubt England was advancing from group play before falling into a deep sleep at 9:45pm.
Hopefully the long day (and 9 miles of walking) will have given the jetlag a swift kick, but time will tell. Day 2 brings us another full day in London.
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