Skip to main content

The great project: getting to Windsor on a grey and rainy day

 As a friend of mine remarked after reading my blog and remembering her own experiences sleeping at an airport one long ago Christmas: “Just keep thinking of it as an adventure.” An adventure testing what stamina we have left in our elder years for sure. At least we haven’t slept at an airport (so far, we still have tomorrow to get through.) 

I didn’t see Elizabeth at King’s Cross yesterday. After writing my blog and taking a shower, I realized I was not feeling up to socializing. For Elizabeth’s sake as much as mine. I think Elizabeth might have been secretly relieved, she replied that we had looked a bit like the Marley brothers’ ghosts when she saw us on Wednesday—sans clanking chains but I certainly felt like I was dragging as did Richard. I was all for hanging out at the hotel all day but after eating what the hotel had to offer in the way of breakfast, Richard said he was up for going back to Piccadilly and revisiting Hatchard’s for reading material. So we traveled back into London, the weather thankfully sunny, and revisited first our favorite cafe at the Royal Academy and then Hatchards and Waterstone’s. And then we went to the M & S Food Express at Terminal 2, loaded up with sandwiches and trifle cups, fruit cups, and went back to the hotel. As I said, at least the weather was sunny and I took some final photos of the area around Piccadilly.







. 

 











I decided to bring out the lovely tea tray that Elizabeth had given me for Christmas to make my M & S feast a bit more elegant. I didn’t use the William Morris fabric napkins though.


There was an NCIS marathon on telly—come to London and watch NCIS, such is modern travel. I wondered if this hotel had been one of the so-called “COVID hotels” where folks had had to quarantine a couple of years ago. The upside would have been clean and comfortable (once you figure out how the heating works); the downside would have been the in-house restaurant food.

It’s really nasty looking outside this morning but we have non-refundable tickets to Windsor Castle this afternoon so we are preparing to bundle up and find our way out there. Certainly not the holiday we had planned but at least it’s provided grist for the writing mill and, so far at least, we’ve been able to regard it from a kind of wry “we are still very lucky” point of view.

And now to Windsor

Comments

  1. OneKidsMomDecember 30, 2022 at 5:23 AM

    On to Windsor! So glad both you and Elizabeth were flexible and paying attention to your health needs! Sometimes a thing that would be so small becomes HUGE when not feeling 100%. Learning to pace ourselves is a senior skill!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sunday in Richmond Park & Memories

  One of the reasons I came back to London after Ireland was to keep a date with my cousin Elizabeth: a Sunday morning walk in Richmond Park. When I moved to England in May of 1978, I rented a room in a house near Richmond Park. I'd heard of the room through a colleague at McGill University's Human Resources Department, where I was working as a Senior Clerk. Montreal had become a bit difficult for me to be in owing to a twice-broken heart and a feeling I wasn't going anywhere at McGill. It seemed like an omen, then, on the plane returning from South Africa in January of 1978--I keep promising to write about that--that I came across an article in a magazine about young Canadians living in London. I'd always loved the idea of being in London what with growing up on a diet of British movies and then all of the articles about Swinging London in the 1960s/early 1970s.  By the time I arrived at Mirabel Airport, I had the perfect antidote to my wounded pride over South...
Post a Comment
Read more

Duckett's Grove/Castle, Co. Carlow

Golly I am tired tonight! We had a really busy day. We went into Carlow town to return a pair of sweatpants that R. bought and didn't like. I also went to the Bank of Ireland and started up my bank account. They do things very differently here than in Sierra Vista. There are no tellers for simple deposits or withdrawals; the bank branch in Carlow consists of four ATM machines and one international exchange cashier. And three personal bankers who are extremely helpful. I discovered that you don't make a deposit, you make a lodgment. Weird, eh? We went to Tesco's after the bank to get our every-other-day food shopping done. Small refrigerators--have to be careful in buying. We also bought some new "orthopedic" pillows that will hopefully help our neck issues. Bought a couple of pre-made sandwiches and ate them in the car when we parked at Duckett's Grove. Duckett's Grove is a ruined 19th century great house whose owners kept redesigning the original house ...
Post a Comment
Read more