Recap - Day 3 - London

Waking up in Windsor, just across the street from the castle was surreal.  It had been 11 years since I was in England last.  How much life I have lived in the past decade!

After not getting my requested wake up call (called a knock up in England - insert jokes here), I only had 30 minutes to get ready.  Thankfully I had enjoyed a nice, long, hot shower before bed so I could get packed and ready in a half hour!

We ate the cold buffet at the hotel thanks to the airline (only $18 for cereal, fruit, yogurt and toast) and then embarked on a very quick tour of London. 

We had to take a train into London and then navigate the Underground that is under construction for the 2012 Summer Olympics. As we were wandering around Trafalgar Square, we saw the Uganda House (Ugandan consulate) across the street!  Of all places to be in London, we ended up there!  How fitting.

We decided to get on a double decker tour bus and ride around London for 2 hours listening to "Uncle Barry" as our tour guide.  He was an older, retired gentleman that was very knowledgeable...he even spoke in 5 different languages rather fluently while we were on the bus.  We didn't get off the bus at any point to do more specific sightseeing since we were on a fairly tight schedule.  We saw all of the major sights and a few minor ones.  He caught some of us dosing (thanks to jet lag!) in the midst of his presentation and chose to make it known to everyone - but we'll forgive him!

As we were walking around after the tour trying to find some authentic fish and chips for lunch, we got to see Parliament and Big Ben up close and personal.  Here is Sarah with Michael's monkey in front of Big Ben.

After talking to a traffic cop to get directions to a fish and chips joint, we walked up the street and went down into a basement of a 'restaurant'...that's where they put larger groups of American riff raff.  We were served our fish and chips for nearly $14 per person.  Yikes!  Thankfully we had travel insurance to help pay for all of our purchases!  Most of the people at our table ordered water to drink.  Never would we have expected to have 5 different brands of water bottles delivered to our table...but even worse was that the bottles were not sealed so we know that they were refilled bottles...served with glasses with one cube of ice in them!  Hopefully not the norm in most United States restaurants!  I had ordered a "Fanta" and got some watered down version of a soda...at least it was not water!  Just a little sketch!

After lunch we got back on the Underground and then switched over to the train back out to Windsor to the hotel to pick up our luggage and find a way back to the airport!  As we pulled into Windsor it started to rain (in true English fashion!) so we did some quick souvenir shopping and went back to the hotel.

We got onto a bus shuttle/taxi that serviced the airport and headed back into London.  We kept stopping every couple of minutes to let people on and off and we seriously wondered if we would make it to the airport in enough time to get checked in and through security!  Then, we stopped at a bus stop and the driver took the money box and got off of the bus and no replacement driver was in sight!  I'll admit I got a little worried myself wondering if we were being set up, left for dead, or if we were supposed to get off and transfer to another bus.  After about 10 minutes, a new driver arrived and we were on our way.  Of course the airport was the last stop for the bus service!

As we tried to check in on a new airline without any luggage to check in (since it had been left at the airport overnight), we ran into a few snags.  We all got checked in finally and through security with about an hour before our flight was to take off which gave us a few minutes to shop duty free at Harrod's.  Of course it was too expensive for my taste, but it is always fun to look around. 

We got everyone to the gate with plenty of time to spare and waited to get on the plane.  Here are Josh (left) and Steve (right) Quisenberry - father and son- waiting at the gate for our overnight flight to Uganda!

On the flight I was sitting in the middle of the 3 seats in the middle of the 767.  On one side, a older gentleman from England that had been doing charity work in Uganda since the 60's and on the other a Lebanese woman that had been living in Kampala, Uganda for the past 15 years.  They both wanted to entertain me for a majority of the flight that I was truly hoping to be able to sleep through!  But I heard many wonderful stories about the people of Uganda and some of the cultural dos and don'ts from people that were not natives which I suppose was helpful...if only I could have slept more than about an hour on the flight!