July 29: Last Day in London

It's probably obvious that I have been writing up a lot of these posts after the fact and not on the same day.  For most days I've needed at least an hour to organize my photos and write up a blog entry and many days during the trip I just didn't have enough time and/or energy.  It's now almost a week after I got home and I'm just getting to my last day in the U.K.  I still wanted to complete the blog because it has been a great way to organize my memories and I hope at least a few other people are enjoying it too and maybe getting ideas for wonderful trips of your own.

When I was a kid we'd come back from a trip and take our film in to be developed and then stick them into photo albums and write little notes reminding ourselves about dates and the people/places in the the pictures.  I tend to take a *lot* of pictures now, since I no longer have to think about the cost of film or developing.  It's great to have that freedom, but all those pictures tend to just sit in folders on my computer without any structure beyond their dates.  I'm losing the benefit of all of those little notes I used to write, reminding myself of where I was when I took pictures and who some of the people are.  I'm also not taking the time to weed out the bad pictures (blurry, badly framed, etc) and the duplicates.  Keeping a blog is one way to make all of this happen.  I'm not going to continue this into a blog of my daily life, but I'm resolved to do it every time I take an interesting trip and maybe occasionally just to document a pretty day that called for some good pictures.

OK, back to my trip....  Last Friday, July 29, is a week ago now and it was the last day of my trip.  I woke up a little sad about leaving London but also looking forward to being home with my family again after such a long time away.  My flight was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 6:15 p.m.  I had been getting e-mails from British Air warning me that Heathrow had been pretty crowded and suggesting I allow lots of time for the check-in process and suggesting I get there 3 hours early, which meant 3:15.  I figured things were backing up due to additional security after all the terrorism lately so I took it seriously and planned to catch the Heathrow Express from Paddington by 2:30.

That still left me a chunk of time in London and I didn't want to waste it.  I decided that a walk would be the perfect thing to drink in one last taste of this great city and to get some exercise to help offset the long hours of sitting on the airplane.  So I packed up and left my luggage at the hotel and headed out.

On my first day alone in London I walked from Westminster to the hotel I was staying in then.  Today I decided to make a similar walk -- from this hotel to Westminster but by a different route.  I wanted to go through Kensington Gardens this time because I really loved it when David and I walked there.  I counted backwards and figured out how long it would take me and added in some extra time for lunch and delays and decided I had plenty of time, so off I went and it was a truly wonderful walk and a great way to say goodbye to London.  It drizzled a little from time to time, but not enough to spoil the fun.

Goodbye to the pretty neighborhoods around my hotel:

The middle picture above shows a van in London advertising the U.S. television version of the very British story of Sherlock Holmes (which my family enjoys watching in Canada).  I found that amusing.

Goodbye to the "Round Pond" in Kensington Park, with its many birds, including swans (who can be very graceful but also so goofy looking sometimes!) and those funny ducks (geese?) with the eye patches.

Goodbye to Queen Victoria and the much-lamented Prince Albert:

Goodbye to the quiet pretty paths in Hyde Park:

Goodbye to the over-the-top fancy stuff on the London streets, like Wellington arch:

At this point I have to digress just a bit to explain a special surprise I got on this last walk.  I am very interested in all things royal, but I didn't attempt to see the iconic Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.  I've been told that you have to show up hours early to stake out a spot to see it and that even then it's not really all that interesting, so I gave it a miss.  I didn't even find out what days and times it took place.

On this walk I went past Buckingham Palace and approached it from the back.  I walked along the sides of the palace gardens, which are surrounded by some high, scary walls:

I'm glad the royal family has someplace green they can walk in private.  

As I rounded the corner to the side of palace, I saw crowds outside the gates, which is normal, but I also heard music and wondered what it was.  And I noticed that the crowds weren't wandering around casually but seemed plastered to the gates.  Right at the corner there were just a few children peering in.  I looked over their heads and saw a lot of guards marching around, and the front gates were actually open.  I thought "no, it couldn't be!" and asked one of the kids "is this the Changing of the Guards?" and they looked at me and said "yeah" as if I were the stupidest grown-up they had encountered in their entire lives.  So I watched the whole thing right over their heads.  The people who told me the ceremony isn't super interesting were right, but still it's famous and it was fun to see it once.  And I got it "for free", with no lining up and waiting or having to plan my whole day around being there at the right time.  A nice goodbye back from London to me!

After the ceremony finished, the guards who were finished with their shifts and, I think, some who arrived just to beef up the ceremony, headed back out and up the Mall.  I was headed in a different direction to get to the Westminster tube stop and I saw four of the mounted guards split off and head down the street I was on.  There was a wide median area in the road and they were walking along it with traffic in each side of them.  Very calm, well-trained horses!  I think they must have been going to the guard's museum up the street.  I was close enough to see that three of these four guards were women, which was cool.

Finally, I got to Westminster, for my last view of the Parliament buildings:

Goodbye, Big Ben, and thanks for the time!  It was just past 12:30, which gave me two full hours to get back to the hotel and drag my bags to Paddington and grab a sandwich.  The timing worked out perfectly and I got to the check-in area in Heathrow just before 3:15 as planned.  Everything went smoothly at the airport and I had lots of time to sit by the gate and do some reading and even a little blog work.  Then they announced the flight and we lined up and then everything stopped.  The line didn't move.  And they told us that the flight was going to be delayed.  Back to our seats.  Finally the explanation came:  a piece of equipment on the plane was malfunctioning and needed to be replaced or repaired before we could take off.  Not very reassuring.  Later on they filled us in on the details: it was the microwave that wasn't working, not something safety-critical, but they still weren't allowed to take off on a long flight without a functioning microwave.  I suppose that makes sense if all of our food was frozen.  It wasn't possible to repair the microwave quickly, and their requests to replace the microwave were turning into mountains of paperwork.  Reminds me of Queen's!  They had another plane handy near the gate (complete with working microwave), so they started the process of switching around the planes and moving all of our meals from one to the other.  The flight was postponed from 6:15 to 9:15 and they gave us vouchers to buy "light refreshments" while we waited, which was very nice of them.  So I bought myself a sandwich and sat down for more reading and e-mails.

Finally, we boarded, and ended up taking off closer to 10 than to 9:15, so almost 4 hours late.  We had a late dinner and I managed to doze for a few hours.  We got to Montreal just before midnight their time, but that's 5 a.m. London time and I felt extremely groggy.  I waded through Customs & Immigrations half-asleep but very happy my visa situation had been straightened out before I got there so that there were the usual annoying lines to stand in but no problems.

Luckily, I already had a hotel room reserved near the hotel.  Even if the plane had not been delayed I would have arrived in Montreal too late to get a train back to Kingston that night.  So I hopped on the hotel shuttle bus and checked in to my hotel and slept like a log and woke up feeling pretty good.  I hung around and read and worked on the blog a little until it was time to catch my train and had a comfortable and uneventful ride home.   It was wonderful to get here and see David and Ian again!

And that's the end of the story of my trip.  It was an amazing adventure and I'm glad I did it.  I had much more time alone than originally planned and while I'm still very disappointed about Paris I've learned that I can handle being on my own and can re-group and change plans when I have to.  That's very nice to know for the future.  And the trip has given me many, many beautiful memories to carry with me for the rest of my life.

I am going to try to make one more post in this blog (maybe tomorrow) with some notes about practical things I learned about traveling, and then that will be it.  If you've gotten this far, thanks for hanging in here with me.  If you go someplace interesting and keep a blog, please let me know about it.  I like to hear about other people's adventures and see their pictures!