Tag Archives: UK

London – Day 31

Our first day not on tour. We took the opportunity to sleep in and didn’t get up until around nine o’clock. after getting organised we made it downstairs for breakfast before it closed. After breakfast for Rhain to spend an hour getting ready, doing your hair takes forever when a girl. Eventually we left the hotel and walked down the road towards the River Tems. We stopped at a coffee shop on the way. Apparently if you dine in you pay VAT. If you take away you don’t. Weird.

We walked across the bridge to the London Eye and to the ticket booth. It was cheaper to buy the tickets online. After filling out a bunch of forms to get on the WiFi at the London Eye I could then fill out a bunch more forms to buy the tickets. Eventually after telling them my life story we finally completed the process. We went straight to the desk to pickup the tickets only to find that the tickets needed to be confirmed. Because we had two hours before we could get on the ride we left and decided to explore further.

Rhian bought an umbrella in an attempt to keep dry as London was turning on the water works for us. We decided to make our way to Buckingham Palace. On the way we took a bunch of photos of Big Ben. Using the tablet we managed to find our way to Buckingham Palace in about fifteen minutes. After taking the photos etc we walked back towards the Tems along The Mall that borders St James Park. We walked through the Horse Guards Parade. We were lucky to see the horses changing shifts. Pretty much one horse walks out the front door and another one replaces it. I got a couple photos of Rhian next to a horse. It didn’t fancy her it didn’t take a nibble.

The rain was still falling so we walked back over the bridge towards the London Eye again. We still had 45 minutes to kill so we went inside at the ticket office where we could use the toilets and get something to drink. There is not a lot to say about the ride on the eye. You get in and it does a rotation. I think we could see as far as you normally see even with the bad weather. We took a bunch of photos.

After the ride we caught the London Tube towards Harrods. Once arrving Rhian demanded a photo out the front. I reckon it was up there with one the the fiv e biggest smiles on her face. We spent about four hours walking through each level of the store. I was disappointed with the pet heaven. There was next to no rabbit stuff. Can’t find anything to take home for Molly and Matilda. You should have seen the smug look on the dog that was getting taken care of in the spa. It thought it was the queen.

We also ran in Danielle, Lucy and Kim from our tour. Of all the places people should go in London I guess running into the three girls here is not that surprising. Rhian and I went back down stairs and had dinner at one of the small restraunts. The food was quite good. This is a good thing considering the prices. The Harods beer was actually quite good. After dinner we left Harrods and caught the Tube straight back to the hotel. Back inthe room I organised the check inn for the flights tomorrow and Rhian organised her bags. They were a jumbled mess. We found that baggage had not been included so we needed to add that to the tickets. I then tried the get the hotel to print the boarding passes for me but they just wouldn’t. So I had to go find an internet cafe down the road to print the tickets off.

After organising the next days travelling plans we went downstairs to use the WiFi and have a couple drinks at the bar. Turned out the WiFi was slow so being hungry Rhian and I went down the road to Macas for food and faster WiFi. After our feed we headed back to the hotel and bed. We had an early start the next day.

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Amsterdam to London – End of the tour – Day 30

Today was day 30 of our Topdeck Discover “Dicover” Europe. This meant that it was our last day and all was left is to travel the four countries back to London. It was an early start with an 0730 departure from the Botel in Amsterdam. We travelled on the bus for four and half hours with no service stops. This was the longest stint non stop of the entire jorney. Because of traffic we arrived in Brugge around an hour and half late. This left us with only an hour to explore. Pretty much this gave us enough time to find a magnet and get lunch. We found and purchased a fridge magnet in five minutes. All the restraunts were expensive so Rhian and I walked around for half an hour before giving up and just going to pizza hut. After lunch it was time to get back on the bus.

Our next leg was to the Port in Calis in France. We arrived around 1530. We were due to get onto the 4pm ferry however it turned out the ferry was running an hour late so we actually left at around 5pm. This was the last stop for our bus driver Krzys. Sad to say goodbye he weas an awsome bus driver for the last month. Probably because his Polish. He was eager to get home to his pregnant wife and child. He drove us a total of 7,950kms around Europe and said himself he enjoyed this group., It was like travelling with mates not clients.

The weather across the English Channel was not very good today. Was very choppy but the ferry had stabilizers. This apparently eased it somewhat. I didn’t look out the window. Wasn’t helpful. We reached Dover port about 1830. We walked of the ferry and onto our waiting shuttle bus. This was an old shitty bus compared to the limo we travelled Europe in.

The bus ride into London and to the Umi hotel seemed to go on for a long time. We managed to watch an entire movie in the time it took to reach the Umi Hotel. We arrived at the Umi about 8pm. Sad moment saying good bye to all those we had spent the last thirty days with and those others we picked up along the way. Rhian and I both hope to see a large number of you again. After saying goodbe to everyone Rhian and I set off to catch the Underground to our hotel.

It didn’t take too long to reach our hotel however after arriving and trying to checking the fun began. We handed over our paperwork with the confirmation of our booking. When the assistant looked up our booking he told us to wait a moment while he went out the back. I turned to Rhian and said. He doesn’t have our booking. Sure enough when he returned he told us our booking was cancelled and showed us an email that stated our booking was cancelled on the 8th August. However our paper clearly stated our booking was valid and confirmed on the 17th August. The assistant agreed something didn’t add up. Short story is that we handed over the credit card to book a room and they just took a pre authorisation on the credit card until the mess could be sorted out. Upon getting to our room that was freezing. Rhian turned on the heater and it started to leak water over the floor. We called reception and they sent someone up to have look. It had stopped leaking and was working so they said they would have maintence come check it tomorrow.

By this time it was close to 11pm and Rhian finished writing her narky email to the travel agent about the booking screw up. We went across the road to a hotel for dinner. Food was ok and was not too expensive. After dinner we came back to the room and passed out.

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