London

Our seats on the way to London

John with Prince Edward

The door to our room at the Feathers

The Cricket match

In front of Lord March's estate

Hardy, Shelia, me and Laurel

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Goodwood

The Hospitality Tents at Goodwood

John in front of the Parliment Building

The London Eye

John and I left on Friday, August 24th for our trip to London and England. We went on a car trip with a group of car junkies. Our flight over was awesome. We had used mileage and got to fly first class on a huge 777. It had the most awesome seats that turned into completely flat beds. John slept for 6 hours or better, I unfornately, only slept for an hour and half. We landed in London on Saturday afternoon. This was John's first trip to England since we had gone on our honeymoon over 11 years ago. It was sunny and warm and we quickly checked into our hotel and went for a walk around town. Our hotel was across the street from Buckingham palaces' mews. A mews is a place where you keep the horses and carriages. We walked up through Trafalgar Square and onto Leicester Square and into Picadilly Circus. After our lunch at Planet Hollywood we walked down through Green Park and back to our hotel for a much needed nap. We woke up at 8 and went walking towards Harrods and looked for a place to eat. Everything was slammed because it was Saturday night. We finally found a really good Italian restaurant across the street from Harrods. On Sunday we hooked up with our tour group and headed North towards Woodstock. Our hotel was a really lovely bed and breakfast called the Feathers. Our room was the Mallard Room. The ceilings were very low throughout the hotel and after John almost knocked himself out on the first door way he spent the rest of the stay with his head way down. We were directly next door to Blenheim Palace which is where Winston Churchill was born and his family lived. There was a fair going on so we checked out the gardens and the Ferret Races. We went to a couple of car museums and got caught up in huge crowds on Monday due to the fact is was a bank holiday and everyone was out and about for the last day off until Christmas. On Tuesday we headed back down to London and spent a couple of days going through peoples private garages. Thursday we left and headed south to Portsmouth and Goodwood. We are official Pompeys. That is we were convinced by some local guys we met at our hotel that the only soccer team to root for was Portsmouth and their fans were called Pompeys. Okay then. Thursday afternoon we spent at Lord March's estate where we witnessed our first cricket match. Many of the drivers were there playing. We were served our first glasses of Pimms and had a very nice tea when the cricket players took their half time break. Friday we were off to Beaulieu House (pronounced Beyoulee) They had the most wonderful car musuem and had one of the original cars made for the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, of course they had many more wonderful cars but I am easily amused. We spent the afternoon at Goodwood watching practice. Saturday and Sunday were amazing. We had a private suite right off the track where we had an amazing view of the cars just after they started each race. Our group was dressed to the nines in vintage fashions on both days. Almost everyone dresses up in 40's, 50' or 60's dress. We headed back to London on Monday morning to end our trip. John and I didn't have a flight home until Tuesday so we spent one more night at the Reubens. We went for a walk past Westminster Abbey and over the bridge to the London Eye. John had not seen it in person yet. We crossed back over the Thames by walking the Jubilee bridge. We went up to Leicester Square and bought tickets to see Little Shop of Horrors. We then went off to the Ritz and had tea which filled us up until late that night. We saw a 745 show of LSof H and then walked back to our Hotel. We were up and moving at 645 and out the door on the way to Heathrow by 730. We took off a little late and arrived home at 3 in the afternoon. We were very excited to see our boys who were waiting for us at Grandmas.