Detailed Photo Review of Paris and London Trip in June 2019

[deladane]

I was so charmed by this little town, with something beautiful to see in every direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The spire peeking out in the background is from St John the Evangelist’s Church, a Victorian Roman Catholic church that was badly damaged in WWII.

 

 

[JaniceB]

I finally got caught up with your review.  You covered a lot of ground miles.  I wish I was young again so I could keep up your pace.  Can't wait to hear the rest.

[deladane]

8 hours ago, JaniceB said:

I finally got caught up with your review.  You covered a lot of ground miles.  I wish I was young again so I could keep up your pace.  Can't wait to hear the rest.

 

We averaged over 10 miles, over 20,000 steps, and over 20 flights of stairs every day of our trip without even trying to walk that much!  It's amazing how fast the miles add up!!

[deladane]

As I returned to the traffic circle, I could see several tour buses lined up so I knew I’d better hurry up. 

 

 

When I got back to the intersection where Russell dropped us off, I saw DH working his way through a fresh Belgian waffle topped with nutella.  He bought it from The Real Italian Ice Cream Company, and he was nice enough to save me a bite.  Wow, it was delicious!  We got back on the bus along with the last few people on our tour, and the bus pulled away at exactly 3pm.

 

Andy told us it would take one hour to get to our final stop at Stonehenge.  He handed out special maps and explained how we could use the laser pointer on the tip of our Vox Boxes to scan each number on the map and listen to the history of Stonehenge.  I have never seen anything like this before, but it was really easy to use.  Andy recommended that we spend our time on the bus listening to all of the audio files so that we could focus our time at Stonehenge actually seeing the stones and taking photos instead of trying to listen to the audio guide in our limited time out there.

 

 

 

We pulled into the parking lot at exactly 4pm.  It’s amazing how all of our stops today were such precise distances away (exactly 1 hour from London to Windsor, 2 hours from Windsor to Bath, and now exactly 1 hour from Bath to Stonehenge!)  Andy said our bus would be departing at 5:20pm to return to London, and he pointed us down a path towards the visitor center where we could board a shuttle to drive us out to the stones.  There is a trail if you choose to walk out to the stones, but that would take 30 minutes so we did not have enough time to do that (nor did we really want to walk when there was the option of taking a 5-minute bus ride haha).  There were already several people from other tour buses waiting in line to take the shuttle, so we couldn’t fit on the first one to arrive.  Luckily, another shuttle pulled up a minute later.  Along the way, you have views out over the vast countryside, with nothing but grass and trees as far as the eye can see.

 

 

[deladane]

When you exit the shuttle, it is very obvious where to go next.  There is a long path through the grass leading up to and around the stones.  By now, it was late in the afternoon, and there were hundreds of other tourists here with us, but since the path encircling the stones is so large, it never really felt crowded.

 

 

You can see lots of people crowded on the right side of this photo.  You are not permitted to walk directly up to the stones, and you must stay on the marked path which forms a circle around the entire perimeter.  The spot where all those people are standing is the closest point to the stones.  We opted to walk clockwise around the stones so we would end our loop at that spot as a grand finale.

 

 

This was such a huge bucket list moment for us.  We both found it so fascinating to learn the history of Stonehenge and how it was possibly used as a burial ground.  Archeologists believe this monument dates back to 3000BC.  It just seems so incredible to imagine that these stones have stood in this position for 5000 years!  We took our time walking around the perimeter and pondering how on earth those people carried these enormous stones without using a wheel. 

 

 

 

This arrow lines up to the path of the sun on December 21 as it sets precisely between the opening between the stones on the Winter Solstice.  There is a similar view directly across the stones where the sun lines up on June 21 for the Summer Solstice.  We were here just 10 days after the Summer Solstice, but that was actually a good thing because Stonehenge is closed to tours on that day!

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

We spent about half an hour walking around the stones and taking it all in.  Unlike Windsor Castle and Bath, I thought that was the perfect amount of time to spend at Stonehenge and I was ready to head back at that point.  It was now 4:45pm, so we walked back to the shuttle bus pick up location and were met by a huge line of people!  Oh my!  All of those people who had been crowded around the stones were now all leaving at the exact same time as us.  Bus after bus arrived and we were still no where near the front of the line.  I think we waited for 4 or 5 buses until we could finally board, so that took much more time than we anticipated.  We knew it would be a long bus ride back to London so we wanted a few minutes to use the restrooms, but by the time we got back to the visitor center, it was already 5:10pm.  Of course, you must walk through the souvenir shop upon exiting the shuttle, and there were no signs pointing us towards the restrooms.  We walked as quickly as possible around the shop to the exit, found an employee and asked where we could find the restrooms as precious minutes ticked away. 

 

Mission accomplished, we then had to find our way back out to the coach bus parking lot, and all the way to the back of the lot where our bus was parked.  We got back to the bus at 5:25pm, just as Andy was getting ready to close the doors!  Whew!  It was such a relief that he waited for us, and I have a feeling we weren’t the only ones having trouble getting back to the bus on time!  Unfortunately, we waited until 5:30pm and were still missing two people.  Andy arranged to send those people back on one of the other Evan Evans buses who were due to depart a little later.  I can only imagine how stressful it would be for that couple when they arrived back at our bus’s parking spot and the bus was gone, with Andy and Russell no where in sight!  Hopefully the guide from the other bus had a way to identify this couple, and hopefully they didn’t leave any of their belongings on our bus. 

 

As we left Stonehenge, Andy said we would have a 2-hour drive back to London.  After such a long day of touring, it was nice to have this extended rest break, seated comfortably on an air conditioned bus.  As we were sitting near the front of the bus, we overheard Andy take a phone call shortly into the trip from the other tour guide who said he found the couple that missed our bus and they were all set to return on his bus instead. 

 

We hit a lot of traffic as we were getting closer to London, so Andy offered to make an extra stop in South Kensington near the Gloucester Road tube station.  We would be driving passed there on our way to the Victoria Coach Station so it was not out of the way, and it would allow people staying on the west side of the city to get back to their hotels that much sooner.  At first, we ignored his offer, but the more I thought about it, I realized we should take advantage of the opportunity.  We didn’t have anything pre-planned to do tonight, so if we hopped off the bus at the first stop, we would be just a few blocks from Hyde Park and Kensington Palace.  I had considered going there on Tuesday morning before our flight home, but the more I thought about it, I realized it made more sense to check those places off the to-do list tonight while we were already so close by, and then we could do something else tomorrow.

 

[deladane]

Russell stopped the bus on a street corner across from the Gloucester Road tube station at 7:30pm.  We had officially spent 6 hours on that bus today, but amazingly, it did not feel as overwhelming as it sounds.  We really enjoyed our day with Evan Evans Tours.  Yes, we felt rushed in Windsor and in Bath.  Yes, we wished we could spend more time at each of the attractions.  Yes, we spent the same amount of time on that bus as we did off the bus exploring each destination.  But we knew what we were signing up for when we booked this tour, and we knew that if we wanted to see Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge in one day, then it would make for a very long day with only a limited glimpse at each of those places.  With that in mind, we checked off a few more places on our bucket list and we learned a lot about the history of this region.

 

With the help of Google Maps, we walked up towards Hyde Park.  This was a really pretty section of London and I wished we had more time to explore, but it was late, we were hungry, and we wanted to get to Kensington Palace before dark which meant dinner had to wait.  Hyde Park is huge, but we only had time to cut through a small section on the western edge. 

 

 

As we approached Kensington Palace, we could see lots of signs hanging on the exterior fence.  As it turned out, we were here on July 1, which was Princess Diana’s birthday, so there was a tribute set up for her on the fence.

 

 

By now, it was nearly 8pm and the palace had already closed for the day.  We weren’t planning to go inside anyway, but it would have been nice to walk around the grounds.  Unfortunately, the gates were locked and this was as close as we could get.

 

 

We were starving, so we didn’t stay long and left the park in search of somewhere to eat dinner.  I had seen photos of a pub nearby here on one of my social media feeds and wanted to eat dinner there.  As the crow flies, it seemed like it was very close by, but the way the roads go, we had to walk out of our way out to a main road, then double back in towards the pub.  We didn’t know the best way to exit the park, so we just started walking west away from Kensington Palace.  That brought us out to a beautiful tree-lined street called Kensington Palace Gardens.  This street is home to about 20 embassies for countries like Italy, France, Nepal, Lebanon, and Russia.  It felt like walking around Epcot Center in Disneyworld!  Country after country lined up next to each other, and it was fun to try to guess what country was coming up next!  That was an unexpected but fun way to pass the time as we walked towards dinner.

 

[deladane]

After nearly a mile of walking, we approached The Churchill Arms pub and I was immediately obsessed.  This building looked like something out of a fairy tale, with bright flowers covering the outer walls, and flags flying in the breeze on the roof.  There were tons of people standing outside, enjoying a pint while chatting with their friends.

 

 

We went inside, expecting to see what happened at most of the other pubs we visited this week… tons of people drinking outside, but no one eating dinner inside.  It was now 8:30pm on a Monday night, so you would think that was an off-peak time.  Nope!  It was sooooo crowded inside this pub and we didn’t see a single open table.  We walked through the whole pub to the back where there was a waiter with a clipboard for the waiting list and he said it would be a 30 minute wait to be seated.  It seemed like most people eating here were locals, so I found it kind of weird that it was so crowded this late on a work night… don’t these people have to go to work tomorrow morning??  By now, I was beyond starving and there was no way I could wait 30 minutes to be seated, plus even longer to get my food, so unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be and we had to leave.  Reviews online say this place serves good thai food, but I’ll have to come back another time if I want to try it.

 

As we were walking towards Churchill Arms, I noticed another pub called Old Swan further up the street, so we doubled back to check it out.  It was kind of hard to change mentalities because I was looking forward to thai food for dinner and now we’d be eating British food… again… but I was way too hungry to start wandering around to find somewhere different.  Old Swan was about one-third full, so there were enough locals eating here that we figured it must serve tasty food, but not so crowded that we’d have to wait for a table. 

 

The bartender told us to sit wherever we wanted, and to come see her at the bar to place our food and drink orders.  I ordered a cider (of course!) and a steak and ale pie.  It was pretty good, but honestly, I was so hungry that I would have thought a pile of cement tasted good haha

 

 

We finished up dinner around 9:30pm and just headed back to the hotel for the night.  In theory, we could have gone out to another pub, or explored the neighborhood a little more, or even walked up to Notting Hill which was just a few blocks away, but we were tired and still needed to pack up our bags before checking out of the hotel tomorrow morning.  If you remember back to our first day in London, I mentioned that DH had a mission to visit as many pubs as possible.  The qualification for if the pub “counted” in our tally was if we each had one drink at the pub, so the grand total for our 5 days in London came out to 11 pubs!  Not too shabby!

 

Luckily, we were very close by the Notting Hill Gate Underground Station, so we hopped on the Tube to get back to the hotel.

 

 

Fitbit Daily Summary… Steps: 19,502,  Miles: 9.41,  Flights of Stairs: 13 (not bad for a day when we spent 6 hours on a bus!!)

 

[geoherb]

6 hours ago, deladane said:

If you remember back to our first day in London, I mentioned that DH had a mission to visit as many pubs as possible.  The qualification for if the pub “counted” in our tally was if we each had one drink at the pub, so the grand total for our 5 days in London came out to 11 pubs!  Not too shabby!

 

 

 

I was able to beat your number of pubs in one night with friends from work. We did a Circle Line pub crawl. We made it to 13 pubs that night.

[pd7277]

I'm still here Dana!  I even passed the link onto a co-worker that is headed to Paris next week.  She said she picked up quite a few helpful tips. 😀

[deec]

PCrum. "We spent two nights in Windsor after our TA cruise in April/May, "

Where did you stay in Windsor...spending a week in London area pre-cruise and would like to spend a few days/nights renting a cars and touring Windsor, Bath, Stonehenge and Oxford... All suggestions welcomed

 

 Dana your help and advice is so valuable...thanks...I am definitely going to check where else you have reviewed....how about a cruise to the Midnight Sun and a River Cruise in China!

[deladane]

3 hours ago, geoherb said:

 

I was able to beat your number of pubs in one night with friends from work. We did a Circle Line pub crawl. We made it to 13 pubs that night.

 

Whoa!  Sounds like a fun tour, but that is a lot of pints of beer!  We popped into a few other pubs but those didn't count in our tally because we didn't both have a drink there.  

[deladane]

2 hours ago, pd7277 said:

I'm still here Dana!  I even passed the link onto a co-worker that is headed to Paris next week.  She said she picked up quite a few helpful tips. 😀

 

Glad you're still checking in 🙂  Hope your co-worker has a wonderful trip to Paris!

[deladane]

11 minutes ago, deec said:

PCrum. "We spent two nights in Windsor after our TA cruise in April/May, "

Where did you stay in Windsor...spending a week in London area pre-cruise and would like to spend a few days/nights renting a cars and touring Windsor, Bath, Stonehenge and Oxford... All suggestions welcomed

 

 Dana your help and advice is so valuable...thanks...I am definitely going to check where else you have reviewed....how about a cruise to the Midnight Sun and a River Cruise in China!

 

England is the furthest north I've visited on the other side of the pond, and the only places I've visited in Asia are Israel and Turkey, so unfortunately I haven't reviewed those cruises!  Click the link at the top of my signature for a list of all my prior Cruise Critic reviews... my personal favorite was the Paul Gauguin cruise in 2017, but there's also a bunch of Caribbean cruises and a Mediterranean cruise too! 🌴

[deladane]

 

Tuesday, July 2, 2019 ~ Tower Bridge, Borough Market, and flying from London to New York

 

Reality set in when we woke up this morning and realized our time in London was coming to an end.  Luckily, our flight wasn’t until 5pm, so we had a few hours left to play tourist before heading to the airport.  We ate a quick breakfast downstairs in the hotel, then went back to the room to finish packing our luggage (which was quite a fiasco considering the tiny size our hotel room!).  I spoke to the receptionist about checking out of the hotel while DH carried everything down to the lobby so they could hold our bags. 

 

I had a few ideas of things we could do for our last few hours in London.  We could have gone to Abbey Road to take photos of the famous crosswalk from the Beatles album, or gone shopping at Harrods, or explored Camden Market.  In the end, we decided to go back down to Tower Bridge because we had yet to take a good photo with the bridge and we wanted to walk across it.  By now, we had taken the Tube to the Tower Hill station several times, so at least it was familiar and we knew where to go!

 

As we approached the Tower of London, we could see that the gates were open and we could access the walkway along the Thames River.  This was where we tried to go the other night but couldn’t get there because the gate was closed.

 

 

 

This was as close as we got to entering the Tower of London… We peaked inside the gates as we walked along the sidewalk.  I’m sure there’s plenty more to see inside those stone walls, but that will have to wait until a future visit to London!

 

 

The puffy white clouds made for a beautiful backdrop!  After a heat wave over the weekend, the temperatures were in the low 70’s this morning, so it was the perfect weather for a little walk around the city.

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

I love how this photo came out, with the sun shining bright against the towers, the red doube-decker bus driving across the bridge, and the Shard sticking out in the background.

 

[deladane]

We doubled back to find a staircase leading up onto the bridge so we could walk across it.

 

 

 

 

The sidewalk juts out around the towers and there are some displays about the history of the bridge, so we took a few minutes to read them.  Sorry, no photos of that! 

 

Once we reached the south side of the Thames, we walked west through the neighborhood in search of a supermarket.  We wanted to buy some candy to bring back to our families as souvenirs, and needed to save that task for today or it would have melted in our hotel room!  We found a small local market right on the corner which sold sampler packs of 6 or 7 varieties of Cadbury chocolate bars.  They were like Halloween candy, with individual mini bite-sized pieces of candies we had never seen before in the States, so that was perfect!  We bought several boxes for our relatives, then continued walking around Southwark. 

 

Potters Fields Park with City Hall peaking out in the background.

 

 

I liked the fencing outside the park.

 

I just could not get enough of these pubs!  And even better when another major monument is showing behind it!!

 

 

 

[deladane]

This long piece of concrete was actually a water feature but it’s hard to see the water trickling down in the photo.  Either way, it said exactly what I was wanting in that moment… more London!

 

 

I realized we were close by Borough Market, so we walked over there to check it out.  We weren’t hungry since we only ate breakfast an hour earlier, but it was still fun to look around at the various vendors.

 

 

 

 

Around 11:30am, we decided we’d done enough walking and made our way back to the London Bridge station to head back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage.  I still cannot get over how clean it was in the Underground stations and how wonderful it was to see working escalators at every entrance/exit!

 

 

[Walt fan]

I am still here and I don't want this adventure to end.  I have so enjoyed every single minute.  Your Evan Evans bus tour was perfect for all that you did that day.  Wow, that was a lot of time in a bus without a bathroom.  You would think tour busses that travel further would be equipped.  But, they did a really good job of meeting their destinations.  Kudos again to all of your planning.  I have added so many things to my bucket list London trip.  I am really hoping it will happen in three years.  DH knows that list is already starting.  I love the pubs in London.  Which was your favorite?  

 

I will be at the tail end of your blog!

[Purdey16]

Thank you deladane for a wonderful review and all your fantastic photos , loved your Paris trip and learned so much of what to see and do , we are like you and do so much in a day to experience all these wonderful places , sometimes when it is on our door step we forget to go and visit and after 40 plus years of living here we have only just got to visit Windsor castle and did bath two years ago but still to visit Stonehenge which is only a hour away , it's taken me a few nights to catch up on your review and can't wait until your next one you do so much research and valuable information for everyone , I'm off on my cruise in about 6 hours to Norway for a week so I will catch up how your flight home went when I get back ,  thank you again 

[deladane]

18 hours ago, Walt fan said:

I am still here and I don't want this adventure to end.  I have so enjoyed every single minute.  Your Evan Evans bus tour was perfect for all that you did that day.  Wow, that was a lot of time in a bus without a bathroom.  You would think tour busses that travel further would be equipped.  But, they did a really good job of meeting their destinations.  Kudos again to all of your planning.  I have added so many things to my bucket list London trip.  I am really hoping it will happen in three years.  DH knows that list is already starting.  I love the pubs in London.  Which was your favorite?  

 

I will be at the tail end of your blog!

 

Thanks for hanging in there with me... I'll be finishing up my last posts today 🙂  That Evan Evans tour really did run like clockwork.  It was obvious that they do that tour every day and have been doing it for years so they know what to do to ensure it runs efficiently.  I am still surprised that there were no bathrooms at the back of the bus, but luckily there were always public bathrooms at each of our stops!

 

As for the pubs, they were all very similar in terms of the service and drink offerings.  I liked Anchor Bankside for it's great outdoor location and the berry cider (everywhere else just had the typical apple cider).  I liked Black Friar best for the unique interior decor.  I liked the Red Lion best for it's history.  And of course, I liked Churchill Arms best for its exterior decor!  

[deladane]

11 hours ago, Purdey16 said:

Thank you deladane for a wonderful review and all your fantastic photos , loved your Paris trip and learned so much of what to see and do , we are like you and do so much in a day to experience all these wonderful places , sometimes when it is on our door step we forget to go and visit and after 40 plus years of living here we have only just got to visit Windsor castle and did bath two years ago but still to visit Stonehenge which is only a hour away , it's taken me a few nights to catch up on your review and can't wait until your next one you do so much research and valuable information for everyone , I'm off on my cruise in about 6 hours to Norway for a week so I will catch up how your flight home went when I get back ,  thank you again 

 

Thank you for reading along!  I am about to upload the last few posts so they will be here waiting for when you return.  I hope you have a wonderful cruise to Norway!  Maybe you'll come back and post your own review?? 😄

[deladane]

The location of Central Hotel was extremely convenient for when we had to travel with our luggage.  We collected our bags from the lobby, walked a half block up to St. Pancras station, and that it was it!  Super easy!  They have a tourist information office at the station so I went in to ask about returning our Oyster Cards while DH waited in the hallway with our bags.  From what I could find online before the trip, I was under the impression that you cannot return your Oyster Card to get a refund of the £5 deposit if you still have time left on a Travel Card.  The Travel Card was for 7 days, but today was only our 6^th day in London, I didn’t think we could get back our deposit but it was worth taking a moment to speak with an agent and find out for sure.  In the end, I’m glad I did that because it was no problem at all to get a refund for our 2 Oyster Cards!  Of course, you are welcome to keep your card as a souvenir or for future visits to London, but who knows when we’ll be back so it made more sense to just take the refund since we could get it.

 

Our next mission was to purchase tickets to Gatwick Airport.  That journey would not have been covered by our Travel Card, so we opted to buy paper tickets from the machine as opposed to loading more money onto the Oyster Card to cover the cost of that journey.  There is a specific train called the Gatwick Express which runs nonstop between the airport and Victoria Station, but since we were not staying on that side of the city, it did not make sense for us.  Instead, we needed to take the Thameslink train from St. Pancras Station.  The train would make a few stops before reaching Gatwick, and it would take us about an hour to get there, but we could stay on the same train for the entire journey so that made the most sense when traveling with lots of luggage.  The ride cost about £12 per person, and it was easy to follow the directions on the ticket machines and pay with a credit card. 

 

We asked an agent where to board the Thameslink and he directed us all the way down to the far end of St. Pancras Station.  Once there, it was very clearly labeled and we looked on the electronic schedule boards for the when the next train would arrive.  The trains run about every 15 minutes, but we were lucky and only had to wait about 2 minutes for the next train to arrive.  When we climbed on board, there was a luggage rack right there near the doors and there were plenty of open seats.  The whole process could not be any easier!  It was now around 1pm, so it was not peak rush hour, and the train car was never more than half-way full (although I think they did run out of space in our luggage rack towards the end of the journey!). 

 

Exiting the train at Gatwick, we followed signs up the escalator to enter the South Terminal, and the Norwegian Air check in counter was the first one when we walked through the doors!  The separate line for people with premium seats had one couple speaking with the agent at the counter, so we waited in line for maybe 3 minutes.  The agent did ask to weigh our backpacks, so that was different from what we experienced in California, but it wasn’t an issue because both bags were under the 10kg limit.  She checked our 3 rolling bags (which were all under the 20kg limit), and gave us passes to access the lounge inside the terminal.

 

There was hardly anyone in line for the priority line at security, and before we knew it, we were walking through the terminal in search of the lounge.  It was located down a hallway off to the side in the upper level of the terminal, but there were plenty of signs pointing us in the right direction so it was easy to find.  We handed over our passes at the reception desk and were pleased to see it was much less crowded than the lounge at Oakland’s airport!  We found some chairs near the windows, and took turns exploring the options of snacks and drinks.  We skipped lunch today, anticipating a spread similar to what we had in Oakland, but sadly, we weren’t so lucky this time around.  They had a small platter of fresh veggies and hummus, coleslaw, a few bland dry cakes, and couple of hot dishes with baked beans and potatoes that looked completely unappetizing.  They did have fresh popcorn and a bunch of flavored salts you could add to the bag, but the popcorn was burnt both times they brought out fresh bags.

 

 

I guess I can’t really complain because it was free!  The drinks selection was much more impressive, with a self-serve station for beer and cider on tap, wine, and an assortment of hard liquors and mixers.  DH was thrilled that he could make his own drink and not be throttled by a bartender like in Oakland, and I just stuck with a glass of wine.

 

 

 

[deladane]

We spent about an hour and a half in the lounge, helping ourselves to refills of our drinks.  Gatwick does not announce the departure gate until it is nearly time to board the plane, but luckily, there was an electronic screen in the lounge where we could find out our gate once it was announced.  After we left the lounge, we got our first glimpse at the Gatwick terminal.  It looked like a shopping mall!  There were lots of stores and food vendors, with tables and benches and lots of places to sit, but it felt very chaotic because it wasn’t organized by gate like most airports I’ve been to.  This really made me appreciate having access to the lounge, and I would consider paying for the passes out of pocket if flying during a busy time of day, just to avoid the craziness in this huge waiting room.  I guess it makes sense that it was so busy in there, considering many people arrived early for their international flights, but then had a lot of time to spare before learning their gate number so they have to wait in this communal space.  It looked very stressful and not relaxing at all!

 

It took us about 15 minutes to walk through the waiting area, down an escalator, then through a series of corridors, before we finally reached our gate.  DH appreciated seeing lots of people wearing Yankees t-shirts from the London Series games, which made sense considering we were flying back to New York!  Just like in Oakland, Norwegian starts boarding their planes over an hour before departure, and we were among the first on the plane because of our premium seats.

 

 

Our flight attendant served glasses of water and juice, and passed out ear buds for the in-flight entertainment system.  Soon enough, it was time to take off for our 8-hour flight across the pond.

 

 

The giant windows on this plane allow for some beautiful photos!  Based on this view of grass and trees lining the runways, you’d never know this airport is located so close to one of the world’s biggest cities!

 

 

 

[deladane]

I had fun playing with the interactive screen.  If you touched the white location markers, it gave you information about that city.

 

 

DH and I synced up our TVs to watch Deadpool together.  After using the audio guides in Paris and London, we got really good at counting to 3, then hitting play or stop at the same time so we’d stay synced up to the same spot.

 

 

About an hour into the flight, they served our first meal, with a choice of chicken or beef.  I opted for the beef… it was a steak with noodles, but I could barely eat it because the steak was several notches above well done, and the noodles and veggies were very spicy.  I just ate the roll the salad, and the cake for dessert and that was enough for me.

 

 

 

I spent most of the flight watching movies on the TVs, and drifting in and out of sleep.  I very rarely sleep even a few minutes on planes, so I must have been very tired from 12 days of walking over 20,000 steps a day!  The 8-hour flight passed quickly, and soon enough, they were serving our second meal, about an hour and a half before landing.  This time, we did not get an option… it was chicken and prosciutto over a small salad, with a roll, cheese, and a candy bar for dessert.  Again, this wasn’t 5-star dining, but at least it was edible!