Claire and Taylor's European Odyssey

Yes, we are back in London. It was quite the shock to go from 40C to 14C and flooding, but hey. Our tans have now faded a little We came back to visit our fabulous hosts Christopher and Laura, and had, as always, the most excellent of cuisine. Shortbread, chocolate cake, tea, Claire's favorite sausages, crumble....ah it is rough.

Although we had been here before at the beginning of our trip, we hadn't had a chance to see much due to Taylor's unfortunate jet lag episode. So this time, we took a bus to St. Paul's cathedral one day and walked over the millennium bridge, then walked down to the London Bridge and the Tower Bridge, and past the London Tower. We also mosied down Regent St and Oxford St - window shopping only, promise!

Our last day we spent with Claire's uncle, Tony, who is her dad's older brother. He lives here in London, but was absent last time we were here. We met him for coffee, then took the train out to Hampton Court Palace (where King Henry VIII presided). We did an audio tour of the place and had some lunch. We were amused by how much Uncle Tony and Roger think they are not alike, but little do they know....some habits are too ingrained! It was great to see him though, and we had a lovely visit. For dinner, the three of us met up with Christopher and Laura for dinner at Thai Silk. They know Tony from, well it is complicated, but they have met before.

They were experiencing floods in England while we were there, and the Thames was flooding a bit too!

Anyways, that was our last day in Europe, we packed up the next day, complete with an extra bag full of amenities for Claire's dad, such as tea and Marmite! You have a keep an Englishman well stocked!

Our flight home was smooth going, much much better than our last Air Canada experience! We had a newer plane and much better service. More leg room, better movies and better (though by no stretch of the imagination good) food. We watched Shooter, Frequency and Music and Lyrics, which made the time go by quite fast. It also meant that we didn't get much sleeping done! By about midnight, London time, we both felt a little weird that it hadn't gotten dark yet....we basically saw 24 hours of daylight....definitely does a number on the body. When we arrived in Vancouver we were pretty beat, so we napped in the sun while we waited a few hours for our next flight to Kelowna. We made it safe and sound at 11pm local time, which to us was about 7am. We slept very well.

Although we enjoyed our travels very much, it was nice to be back in familiar territory. Back to business of job and house hunting now!