London, England & Embarkation

             Monday, 10 Aug 2015 – Yes, we have departed for ANOTHER cruise.  Actually, we are booked on three back-to-back cruises and will be gone for 43 days!  The first one is a 12-day cruise around the British Isles; the second, a 7-day cruise through the Norwegian Fjords; and the third, a 16-day cruise from London to New York with stops in the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, Canada.  We’ll be staying in London for four days between the first and second cruises.  We combined the bookings for the second and third cruises as one, but Princess will give us credit for two cruises.

We consider ourselves lucky to have made it to London.  First of all, somehow we managed to leave home for Peoria, IL two hours late and arrived at the airport about 5 minutes before the flight’s scheduled departure.  When we were allowed to check in, we thought we had barely made it; however, when we arrived at the gate, we found out that the flight was delayed because of storms in the Chicago area.  Therefore, the flight ended up leaving 2.5 hours late from Peoria, which ruined the connection to our 6:20 PM flight from Chicago to Heathrow Airport in London.  The airline representative was able to get us on a later (9:15 PM) flight to London – and we actually had good seats.  With all of that, we decided we are either very lucky, or our guardian angel is watching over us!

We were served dinner, with wine, and a morning snack on our flight to London.  Neither of us slept, although Sally tried very hard.  Jesse watched five episodes of the Game of Thrones which he hadn’t seen previously.

Awaiting Buss at Heathrow Airport

Tuesday, 11 Aug 2015 – We arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport at 11:00 AM, about 3 hours later than we had planned.  We had back row seats, so we were among the last passengers to make it off the plane.  By the time we made it through Immigration, most of the other passengers had already picked up their luggage, so we had no problem locating ours.  We then found an ATM and withdrew a few British Sterling pounds before finding our way to the coach station.  We had purchased National Express coach tickets from Heathrow Airport to the London Victoria Coach Station online, in advance.  Although our seats were reserved for the 12:00 PM coach, since our flight had arrived so late, we were allowed to board a later 1:15 PM coach.  After arriving at the Victoria Coach Station 35 minutes later, we made the short walk to our hotel with luggage in tow.

Our room in the Comfort Inn Buckingham Palace Road was much smaller than those in the USA and much more expensive.   We took an elevator up two floors, but we were still required to carry our luggage up one set of stairs and down another.  Then we napped until dinner time.

The hotel clerk gave us directions to St. George’s Tavern, along with a 20 percent discount coupon.  The restaurant was only a block from the hotel.  During dinner, we conversed with a couple at the next table – Bob and Suzanna from Southern California, who just happened to be staying at the same hotel and taking the same cruise!
 

Dinner at St. George's Tavern

            Wednesday, 12 Aug 2015 – Again, we sat next to Bob and Suzanna at the hotel’s breakfast and enjoyed more interesting conversation with them.  We had purchased London Passes and Oyster Cards online, in advance for our four-night stay in London between cruises.  The London Passes will give us free entry to over 60 attractions and tours, and fast track entry to several key attractions, including the Tower of London.  The Oyster Card will allow us to travel on London’s public coach and railway system at no additional cost.  We will need to make extensive use of the passes and cards to recoup their costs, but we consider it well worth money, if only to avoid hassling with the British currency.



At Trafalgar Square

After breakfast, we started our two-mile walk to the London Pass Redemption Desk.  The directions that we had printed out from Map Quest were not very useful.  They included directions like, “turn North at the walkway.”  However, we eventually ran into a group of volunteer “tourist helpers” who gave us a map and better directions.  Along the way, we stopped at Buckingham Palace and watched the “changing of the guard,” and took photos at Trafalgar Square.  By the end of our two-mile walk back to our hotel, we were both exhausted.

For dinner, we returned to St. George’s Tavern.  The manager noticed that we had forgotten to bring a 20 percent discount coupon, but offered it to us anyway.  By the end of dinner, Bob and Suzanna arrived at the restaurant.  We conversed a little with them before returning to the hotel for the night.

Thursday, 13 Aug 2015 – We went to the hotel’s breakfast.  Although there were no seats available near Bob and Suzanna this time, we did stop at their table briefly.  We had pre-purchased Princess Coach Transfers to Southampton’s cruise terminal, so we checked out of the hotel a little before 10:00 AM and made our way back to the Victoria Coach Station.  Jesse stood in line for 30 minutes to collect our boarding passes, while Sally watched the luggage.  At 10:55 AM we boarded our coach bound for the cruise ship, which took until 3:10 PM.  (The bus stopped at a rest area for a half hour or more to “kill time” because passenger disembarkation of the ship’s previous cruise was running late.)

By 3:30 PM, we had boarded the ship.  Having “preferred boarding” was the best part of our day!  Soon we met our cabin steward, Mark, from the Philippines, and began unpacking our luggage.  At 4:15 PM, we interrupted our packing to participate in the mandatory Passenger Muster Drill.  The drill was the same as on all cruises, providing a napping opportunity for Jesse and numerous other passengers.  Afterwards, we returned to our cabin and finished unpacking.  Jesse finished his unpacking very quickly, until Sally realized that he had only crammed all of his clothing onto the closet shelves; she proceeded to get them better organized – hanging up his tuxedo, etc.

We shared our dinner table with Lula Bell and Janice from West Virginia; Joy and Berl from Alabama; and Sandra and John also from Alabama.  The two couples from Alabama are traveling together.  Lula Bell described their disastrous ordeal during their travel thus far; after hearing their experience, we realized that our own mishaps were minor in comparison.  Since we were booked on an early excursion the following morning, we returned early to our cabin.

[Because the internet on this ship is very slow and our schedules have been very hectic, our blog posting is delayed and will often be very late.]