London

  We flew out of Kathmandu on the 24th May, with a brief stopover at Dohar, and then on to Heathrow airport arriving at 5pm. We caught the underground into London and got out at Kings Cross and soon found a hotel which was cheap by London prices, namely £40 per night, which is about AU$100.00 per night, but after paying only ten Australian dollars a night in Nepal it came as a shock to the system. Friday we went for a walk, first to Russell Square to show Catalina where I lived for eighteen months, and then to Oxford St. to see where I worked during my first year in London. We then walked to Leicester Square because I wanted to see if they still had a ticket booth that sells cheap tickets to the theatres. Well the booth has gone but a more substantial ticket office has been built. We then walked to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. The Queen was in but didn’t come out to greet us.

We then walked to Big Ben and Parliament at Westminster and saw the huge wheel on the south bank of the Thames. I wanted to see the changes to Waterloo Station which I used to follow daily when I caught the train to work many years ago and they were building the additional platforms for the Euro train to Paris. After visiting Waterloo Station we walked back to Leicester Square and purchased tickets for that evening to see the show “Boeing, Boeing”. After the show we caught the uderground back to Kings Cross.

Saturday, and Ken was to return from Amsterdam, and we had arranged to meet his flight at Heathrow airport at midday. We arrived in plenty of time and waited, and waited, and waited. I checked with information if the flight was coming in, and was told that there was no flight number agreeing with the number Ken had told us. I tried to ring Ken on the mobile number he had given me, but only got a recorded message to say the phone was out of service. So I waited for further flights from Amsterdam to arrive. But at 5pm I decided to check my email, and there was an email from Ken, to say that when he arrived in Amsterdam, he left his bag on a tram, and lost his mobile phone and all the student assignments that he was hoping to mark. Also the email informed me that his flight was from Gatwick airport, not Heathrow. The email said to ring his girl friend Jackie and gave a number. I rang Jackie and Ken was at her home, and was really pleased to speak to Ken. Jackie’s house is only half an hour from Heathrow and Ken and Jackie soon picked us up and we all drove to Southampton.

The good thing to come out of Ken’s loss from my point of view is that he had to purchase a new mobile phone, and part of the deal was that he got a second phone free, which he kindly presented to me. In fact when he notified the previous phone company that he was changing companies they told him that because he had been a good customer he had £90 credit to spend at their shop, and as a result he went from no phone to three phones almost instantaneously.

On Wednesday afternoon we went sailing on Ken’s Timeshare 36m yacht. We had intended to sail over to the Isle of Wight and stay there overnight, but the weather reports said that it would be a rainy day, so we didn’t go much out of the harbour. We stopped at a wharf for an Italian dinner and then returned to the marine in the dark but under power. Both Catalina and I had a turn steering.

On Thursday we walked to the historic waterfront and purchased a ticket that is good for a year and permits us to see the HMS Warrior, Nelson’s flagship the Victory, King Henry the Eighth’s flagship the Mary Rose (which sank as it sailed out of Portsmouth on a trip out to sea to fight the French, with King Henry on shore watching) and a trip around the harbour. We went over the Warrior yesterday and I am not sure what we will see today.

Well we went and saw the Mary Rose museum, and probably tomorrow we will see the preserved hulk of the Mary Rose.

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