After one last luxurious day at sea, we gained an hour as the Star docked at dawn in Southampton on the south coast of England. We skipped breakfast and walked off the ship early, making the relatively short trek to the nearby train station. We caught the 7am train to London and enjoyed some British countryside and hilarious conversation with a visually-impaired passenger on his daily commute.
Once we arrived at Waterloo Station, we made a leisurely stroll across the Thames and wandered our way to the Seven Dials Hotel in the entertainment district. The room was small and simple, but we had a great base camp in Covent Garden for our three nights in this wonderful city.
For the next three days, we explored central London extensively on foot, and also took a scenic round trip cruise along the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich, and back and saw it all from the waterline. Most astonishingly, the weather was 24 C and sunny the whole time we were there!
We toured around Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We walked over to Buckingham Palace, where the King was hosting a lavish garden party. Sadly, our invitation was likely waiting in our mailbox back home.....and we were a little underdressed anyway, so we carried on to check out St. James's Park and The Mall.
We experienced some local pub scene. We tried some local beer and fish and chips. Our hotel room was small and stuffy in the heat, so we actually went out most nights to cool down, and enjoy the night life. On a whim, we got tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at The Palace Theatre, which very much looked the part!
After checking out Trafalgar Square, we boarded the Ghostbustour for an eerie and entertaining experience as we toured the sights by night on a classic double-decker.
Overall we walked a LOT - so on our final morning, we thought we would save some pounds and walk some more! We made the one hour trek from our hotel over to Paddington Station, seeing some different parts of London along the way, where we caught the express train to Heathrow Airport.
Our boarding passes revealed that Jane had a seat but Mike was again....on Standby. The flight was so full, they were begging people to check their carry-on bags....so we did our part even though it would cost us time in Toronto. A nice lady with Air Canada at least managed to get me a seat in the same row as Jane in a 3-4-3 configuration, so we could at least see each other across the plane on the seven hour flight home. We watched movies at our respective seats and enjoyed the fine dining experience of airline food.
A surprise awaited us at Pearson, where we got pulled into secondary. Apparently, there was an arrest warrant out for a guy with my same name, middle initial, and approximate age, height and weight. Luckily, after three CBSA officers looked long and hard at my passport and driver's licence, they decided I wasn't the guy and let us go.
After a quick tram ride, we loaded up the Bronco Sport and hit the road. We finally got England weather and drove home in light rain, with a quick dinner stop at Mary Brown's in Woodstock. We walked in the door to needy cats around 930pm, which of course was 230am to us.
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