A lovely drive from New Forest to Salisbury, mainly through forests of autumn coloured trees with some dark green conifers mixed in - had to keep my eyes open for 'wild animals' on the open grassland areas. Reached Salisbury in 40mins, found the station easily, dropped Merilyn and the cases off, and it was only another 3 mins to the Herz yard to return the car, which took less than 5 min. The need to change trains 3 times to reach the station nearest to our hotel had seemed daunting in the morning before left, but it all went very smoothly with relatively short waits between trains and we were at the hotel before 2pm. The hotel is somewhat disappointing - it is in a very good position in a street of lovely Georgian buildings but the room is very small and the whole hotel shows many signs of wear and tear, it is a bit more like a youth hostel. Still, it is clean and we will hardly be in the room during the day and I am sure we will cope well. After settling in we caught the Tube into the city to pick up our London Passes and Oyster cards (like MYKI's) which I had bought on-line. Then, with gloomy skies above and some light rain, we just wandered for a while. Found Leister square, then Trafalgar Square with dozens of tourists trying to photograph Nelson's column using flash because it was almost nightfall. We walked alongside the river for a while and then up to St Pauls Cathedral where, feeling a bit foot sore we found nearby a Vietnamese Restaurant that had lovely food, most of which was gluten free. London certainly is an assault on the senses and we are really looking forward to exploring it.
Friday 27th October
A very good weather forecast in the morning helped us decide to go to Windsor today. We caught the tube to Paddington, then with only minutes to spare found that the next train we had to catch was at platform 14, the furthest one away - Merilyn actually got up to a grandma shuffle (could not be called running) and we made it, puffing and crying/laughing at the same time. Changed trains again at Slough for the very short run to Windsor? Arrived just in time for the changing of the guard - they close off the street between the army garrison and the castle and the guard is escorted by an army band in full dress uniform. It was a bit disconcerting to see heavily armed policeman come through before the soldiers, checking out the crowd - a sign of the times. Windsor Castle is what you would expect of a working castle, very, very impressive. We particularly liked the State Apartments and the St George Chapel where many Kings and Queens have been buried. The grandeur, the artworks, and other displays of wealth are almost overwhelming for us simple folk from the Colonies, but it was good to see and perhaps to understand a little, what Royalty means to the British people.
Four train rides returning to London (we are getting good at this train travel) got us to St Pauls in time for Evensong - we had to go through bag checks on the way in, and then we found a French restaurant for a vey lovely meal - we could get used to this good life.
Have fun in London.
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