Select Page

24 Hours to London!

Written by Jeff Drake
9 · 14 · 22
London

London

By the time a notification about this post is delivered to your inbox, it will be just 24 hours until we depart for London! This is about when I start wishing that time would slow way, way, down. It was okay watching the days fly by until our departure date, but once we land I sure don’t want our time in the UK or Ireland to go by that fast! I want to savor every moment we are there!

As I mentioned previously in my post, On the Road Again (2022), we will be visiting 4 countries this trip with two close friends of ours, Mike and Denise: England, Scotland, North Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Lisa worked her butt off getting the trip planned out (I helped), and an amazing job she did!

For some reason, Queen Elizabeth never checked with us before departing this world. Now, all of London, especially London transportation, has been thrown into a tizzy! We are told the crowds, train and tube stations, will be “crazy!” We had been watching the news for rail strikes – there was one scheduled for our trip, but fortunately, got suspended until after we are out of London.

This morning, however, we got an email from our Devon/Cornwall tour company informing us that the place where we were supposed to meet our tour van had been moved to another city. They told us we had to act “now” to get tickets. Yikes! And this was before coffee!! We jumped on it, of course, as this isn’t our first rodeo, but it was definitely an unwanted adrenaline rush! If this is all that changes between now and when we land at Heathrow, we will breathe a sigh of relief!

Scotland

Scotland

While most everyone seems genuinely sad the old girl is gone, the queen’s passing is certain to make our visit to London memorable! Getting to see the inside of Buckingham Palace or Westminster Abbey is out of the question, I think, and other venues may close temporarily as well. However, I hope to take some pictures of these places with the enormous queues outside, with folks lined up for miles. I figure the people-watching will be especially delightful!

The four of us all like to visit the markets when we travel to an interesting city and London and visiting the Borough Market is on our list of to-dos! The London Travel Facebook group I follow has folks telling me that it is nuts right now at Borough Market, but still definitely worth visiting. It has nowrrow aisles, I guess, so I was cautioned to make sure we use a credit card we can |tap| with to avoid clogging up traffic while paying for something.

We have a full day planned for one of the days we’ll be in London with a British friend of mine, who – bless his heart – is coming to London by train to show us around the town. How nice is that? We are all looking forward to visiting some pubs!

Belfast

Belfast, North Ireland

We are not checking any baggage this trip. We’ve read too many horror stories in the news about lost luggage at Heathrow. I’m packing especially light this time, as light as possible, that is. I won’t be taking my laptop or tablet, which means I probably won’t be posting very often to my blog. As mentioned previously, history tells me that I won’t have time or energy to do blogging at night after a busy day – and every day will be busy!

I contacted a cousin of mine, whom I have never met, who lives in North Ireland. I met his aunt (my cousin, Gwen Drake) back in 2003 and we have exchanged a few emails over the years. He is going to be in France while our group goes to Belfast, so there is no chance that I might actually get to meet him face-to-face. He even offered to put us all up at his house! Now that would have been fun! We learned back in 2003 what wonderful hosts the Irish can be. Oh, well. I told him Lisa and I will see him the next time we visit North Ireland, and there will be another time!

Ireland

Republic of Ireland

We can hardly wait to get there!

Talk to you soon!

This is going to be a real adventure!

Please follow and like me:

Let us know what you think…

Comments

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More Like This

Related Posts

2022 England: “This precious stone…”

"This precious stone..." My wife, Lisa, and I have just returned from our UK-Ireland adventure, a few days short of an entire month of traveling abroad. This particular trip is one that I’ve prefaced with a couple of short posts you can find here, if you are...

read more
Back Home Again!

Back Home Again!

Hi Everyone, we are back from our month-long UK and Ireland vacation! We actually arrived home on the 13th of October, but we’ve been laying low, sick, and are now in recovery mode. Lisa has tested positive for Covid, but is feeling better. I was quite sick in...

read more
On the Road Again (2022)

On the Road Again (2022)

Yep, we’re going on the road again! Lisa and I began this year with an amazing return trip to Italy in March. We visited southern Italy for the first time and it is no lie that Sicily blew our minds! Photo highlights from our trip can be seen here: Palermo Monreal,...

read more

Author

Jeff Drake

Retired IT consultant, world-traveler, hobby photographer, and philosopher.