Arrived at K + K George Hotel Kensington

It’s 7:00 pm and R is just about asleep. I am trying to stay up until at least 8:30 because I don’t feel like waking up at 4:00 am or earlier. Actually, though, I am sometimes awake at that time at home so what’s really the difference?

Our 3+ hour drive to Phoenix yesterday morning went well. R discovered, once we were too far to turn back, that he had left his wallet at home. Luckily I always carry the passports so it really isn’t that big a deal. The strange, perhaps unsettling, part about England is that with tapping no one really looks at your card anymore anyway. So he can use mine if he wants to. We did discover though that we needed two different credit cards to tap our way through the Tube turnstiles. Luckily I have two different credit cards so, again, all is well.

The cutest thing: Laurie and CJ and family are going to CJ’s folks near Sacramento for Christmas this year. It’s one reason we decided to go off on a holiday on our own. And they were flying out of Phoenix just two hours ahead of us. Because I always arrive at an airport for an international flight AT LEAST three hours ahead (this time it was actually four because I feared the flight was overbooked) I was able to say hello/goodbye to them before their plane left:

I have to admit that I can’t really “do” a long-haul (10 hours) flight in Economy anymore—not even Premium Economy. I did manage to sleep a few hours though, more than Richard did.

Discomfort aside, it was a smooth flight and we landed pretty well on time at Heathrow. It’s so easy to take the Tube in from Heathrow too. We found our hotel with no problem at all, it’s a three-minute walk from Earls Court Underground. The room is very comfortable so all is well.

Night night until tomorrow!

Comments

Life on board the Queen Mary

Passenger's log on the Queen Mary 2: Dec 9th - First Day at Sea Didn't sleep well--think it was the soused mackerel at dinner. Anyway, R and I woke up at about 6:00 am and discussed the order of the day. Quite the swell outside and I can feel the roll of the ship. (No seasickness thank goodness!) Despite the mackerel, I was hungry so we went to King's Court at 6:30 a.m. Buffet with loads of choice of course. We sat in an alcove looking out at the ocean. Our server was from Croatia, Slavan. I asked him my burning question of the day--why did we get a free bottle of wine but a regular bottle of Diet Coke cost $3.75? Diet Pepsi is $1.00 less. Fruit juices are free on tap. Coffee, tea, milk, ditto. But you have to pay for soft drinks. Very odd. Slavan says it is because Cunard can't get a good contract with Coke. Hmmm.... our local School District back in Sierra Vista can negotiate .50 a can for the soda machines in the teachers' lounges but Cunard has to cha...

There's got to be a morning after

And today is the fourth "morning after", with each "night before" a little easier, a little more "make the best of it but take care of yourself." Before I move back to writing this memoir style blog--going to continue with the South Africa trip of 1977--I feel I would be shrinking if I didn't say something about how I feel about this week's US election. As of this writing, Saturday, Arizona still hasn’t finished its count—the GOP did a great job of preventing the mail-in vote for being counted early and messing up the ability to use the machines—so I still don’t know if we are going to be saddled with the odious Kari Lake or whether the House is going to be Republican too. Still, it’s becoming more “academic” than visceral for me, if you know what I mean. Necesitamos avanzar. Sera dificil, sabiendo que muchos, especialmente aqui donde vivo, creen en los planes de Trump y Vance. (I have been practicing Spanish in preparation for a 10-day December cr...

December in South Arica 1977, Part One

December in South Africa 1977, Part One I had never understood candlelight in quite this way before. Oh there had been candles on the table Christmases past back home in Canada. For atmosphere, for festivity. While the electric crystal chandelier above cast the “real” light on a table laden with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce.… But this, this was different. Here in the corrugated iron shack that my friends had referred to as “the cottage”—not any cottage that I had ever seen in my growing up in Quebec—with no other light either inside the cottage nor outside in the black night of the Transkei, I understood how candlelight could draw a world down into the narrowness of those around the light, as if nothing else in the world existed. I looked at the six faces around the table, illuminated in the candlelight, my own pulsing with sunburn. "Oh you’ll be grand," they’d told me down at the beach that day. "We’ll tell you when to get out of the sun." And toni...

valeriesbookofme

Search This Blog