A dash of London!

 A dash of London...with 

Shades of Ireland to follow!

As you might have noticed, we love to travel !  They say there are three stages to retirement - Go Go, Slow Go, and No Go.

We are in our "Go Go Era" and recently returned from a trip to Ireland with a few days in London.

We love London...and since we had been there a few times before we had no real planned itinerary, we just wandered and explored.  I can never pass up a good bookstore, and this one in Trafalgar Square is a treat to explore.

One of our favorite things about London is going to the theater in the West End.  Our first stop when we arrived was the Tickets booth in Leicester Square.  Similar to the TKTS booth in NYC, you can get same day and sometimes next day tickets at a good price, and there are no very long lines like you find in New York.  We found this place years ago when and try to see a show each night in London.

First night in London we saw Oh, Mary - we had friends who saw it on Broadway and loved it - and we did too!  Very funny, very irreverent, and a great show.

And, we had to see Les Mis...One Day More, one more time for us!

We were there just before the big heat wave...a few showers, but mostly great weather.

Covent Garden, St. Martin in the Fields...we enjoyed wandering around the city.

Enjoying fish and chips and finding monuments we never saw before...this one to Edith Clavell - a nurse in WWI who was executed by the Germans for helping prisoners escape.  Back in high school I read a book about her so I was happy to find she was remembered.

Our travel package included a tour of the Tower of London, and though we had been there years ago, we are so glad we did not skip it this time.  Our guide was amazing, and we had a great lunch in the Tower Cafe...with some Pride cake!

One of the things I love about travel is happening on things like this...a young girl in the Underground sketching ( she was good ) and them a woman copying some portraits in the National Gallery.

Happy to find Paddington Bear, then our last night in London was attended Vivaldi's Four Seasons in St. Martin in the Fields.  Perfect ending to our time in London...

And then we got to Heathrow Airport for our flight to Dublin to begin our Shades of Ireland tour.  NOT SO FAST - when checking into our early flight the agent asked if we wanted to take an earlier flight and we declined...because of our timed pick up in Dublin.  BIG mistake...we were barely through security when I got the text our flight was cancelled.  Aer Lingus was consolidating flights due to the cost of fuel ( or so we heard afterwards ) and was giving priority to people with connecting flights.  No matter how many times I tried to explain that while we did not have a flight connection, because the flight they put us on was 9 HOURS LATER we were going to miss the welcome meeting and dinner with our tour group.  No luck - so we spent those hours walking around Heathrow, reading, and trying to be good travelers.  We try to go my the motto " Tourists, complain, Travelers adapt."   

We called our Tour Director and he called our pick up company - and when we finally arrived in Dublin I was sure that our welcome dinner was going to be the banana and granola bars in my backpack - but our driver was amazing.  Said the dinner would not be over, he'd get us there  - waited at the hotel while we dropped our bags and then drove us to the welcome dinner restaurant.  We arrived just after the appetizers ( and we still got an amazing salad ). 

Hooray - we were now ready to start our Shades of Ireland tour!

Thanks for coming along to London...I took way too many photos in Ireland and will cull them down for the next post.

Have you been to London or Ireland ?  Did you ever get stuck in Heathrow ?  Leave a comment below - I really enjoy hearing from you.  Enjoy the rest of July and stay cool!