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Posts Tagged ‘Hampton Court Palace’

The Americans have Retreated.

November 29th, 2008 4 comments

I took ma and pa back to the airport this morning. Everything went without issue. Mom is quite worn out but she did survive the week, just. And dad did too!!

Yesterday I once again hired a car, just for the day this time. Mom wanted to see the prime meridian at Greenwich and Hampton Court Palace. So we took off early in the morning in our Vauxhall Astra heading for Greenwich Park. There we wandered around the Royal Observatory in the drizzle that would accompany us all day.

After our visit there we headed across the south of London through terrible Friday afternoon traffic. This is when I really wished I’d opted for an automatic transmission. Regardless I now have a stronger left leg. We arrived at Hampton Court with only a little time to actually go through. We did hit all the major areas however, minus the gardens. But it was raining and despite the current situation, would have been miserable to go through. The rooms within were beautifully decorated and were massive. It must have been quite extraordinary to live in there in the 1700s. There had been a fire in the King’s portion of the state rooms. It was repaired and refurbished and looks fantastic. 

We then departed Hampton Court with the Satnav set for Piccadilly Circus in the centre of London. I want mom and dad to see the lights there as well as the Christmas lights of Regent Street and Oxford Street. We looped up through there seeing everything and being one of the few cars on Oxford Street mixed amongst the busses. Quite intimidating! We stopped off at a few shops and got them some souvenirs, dropped them off back at the hotel, returned the car, and dined on some pub food before calling it an evening!

I’ll put of pictures of yesterday as well as pictures from their trips to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Paris. 

Status Update

In two week time I should be landing, or near landing at Philadelphia International. 

I have a little bit of a dilemma on my hands. After I return home, finish up covering my experience here and write about re-culturing myself the the way of the United States I don’t really know what to do with my blog. I will keep it up for quite a while. I hope to go back through and do a lot of proofing and minor tweaks to the posts, but once that is done I have no idea what else to write about. So for the next couple weeks I’d like to hear from everyone who has been viewing and ready for the past 3 months to leave some feedback on where and what you’d like to see from my site. I’d love to post about my last semester at school but it would all be the same; cold, it snowed, and class sucked. So I’m open for ideas!!

They have arrived, and departed

November 24th, 2008 2 comments

 

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Mom and Dad got in yesterday around lunch time after a rather rough flight over. There was lots of turbulence landing at Heathrow. We got back to the hotel with little fuss, got lunch and then headed up to my flat so they could see where I have been residing for the last three months. I gathered my stuff up and we trudged back down to the hotel had a little bit of a rest and took off for supper. All three of us were worn out after this so we called it a night rather early.

This morning we were up early to get breakfast and get Mom and Dad on their way. They have a tour of London today! They get to see all the famous sites around the city that I have already documented. But of course they need to see the sites up close! The finish up this evening at the London Eye where I will meet them so we can make our way back to the hotel. 

Tomorrow we are set to see Hampton Court Palace but we’ll see how today goes before that is finalized. I’ll make sure to post some pictures from their endeavors today!