Our final blog for this trip was a joint effort between myself and Lidia.

Lidia: Our intention was to leave Iceland early Tuesday morning for our three hour flight and arrive in London with a whole afternoon to explore. Unfortunately British Airways cancelled our flight and we were left scrambling to find a new flight for the same day. The only flight available was a late afternoon flight for more than triple the cost of the original flight we had booked. Not much we could do about it but unfortunately we had lost a day in London and my already jam-packed itinerary just got a whole lot busier. My organisational skills are second to none so with much caffeine and increasing my anti inflam meds, (me not Scott) we soldiered on.

As we left our hotel in Iceland Scott and I decided that because of the late flight we should probably buy something from the café at the hotel to have for dinner on the plane. Just something small until we get to London so I picked up a salad wrap, checked the price and converted it to Aussie dollars. It equated to $42! We decided we weren’t all that hungry after all so by the time we arrived late to our London hotel we were starving to death! We ordered room service and opened our last bottle of red wine which our sommelier friend from the cruise had gifted us. Sitting up in bed enjoying our wine Scott made me laugh. Yes, believe it or not he can still make me laugh. Granted I’m usually laughing at him rather than with him, however it was very bad timing because I had just taken a sip of my wine. I tried to suppress the laugh but unfortunately the wine started to squirt out of my lips and nose. Very unsightly, sorry for the mental image. Trying to contain it I sprung out of bed but unfortunately that mouthful of wine ended up spattering over the white crisp bed linen and ultimately landed on the linen mat on the floor where the turn down service had placed my now burgundy-coloured slippers.

Scott: The next morning we woke early to find a story in the news about Iceland. We had spent our last night at the Blue Lagoon and less than 24 hours after we left a 2.4 kilometre fissure had opened up in the ground, spewing a wall of lava up into the air. They had evacuated the Blue Lagoon!

Our first day in London was busy. We had flown in from Iceland the previous night with Ian and Carmel and the four of us organised to meet Rob and Caitlynne in front of Blackfriars tube station so that we could have a wander around Old London Town.

We had a surprise for Carmel when we all arrived at the station. It is her 60^th birthday next month, so we had organised to have caps printed with “Carmel’s Birthday Brigade” for everyone to wear except for her. Her hat was more special. We managed to achieve our goal of making her look as silly as possible by giving her a giant, pink birthday cake hat, complete with candles. This caused quite a stir as we walked around London for the next few hours. She was stopped many times by strangers wishing her happy birthday.

We walked past ancient pubs, majestic buildings and a few churches designed by Christopher Wren. The churches included St Brides, which is said to be the inspiration for the layered wedding cake, St Mary Le Bow, whose bells are said to determine who is a true Cockney (if you can hear the bells from your home, you are true Cockney), and the famous St Paul’s Cathedral which was built in 1710.

We finished our tour at the Sky Garden, which is the top floor of one of the tallest modern buildings in Old London Town. The security guard sang happy birthday to Carmel as we entered, and we sat around enjoying a bottle of bubbly while enjoying the panoramic views of London, including the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

After lunch we joined a walking tour that included a tour of the state rooms inside Buckingham Palace. The rooms were magnificent, lined with beautiful paintings and sculptures. Apparently Queen Elizabeth opened them up to the public a few years back to pay for fire damage in the palace. Since then they have raked in millions, even though they only open for a few weeks per year. Walking around the opulent rooms amongst priceless works of art, you can’t help thinking about the fact that only one family and very few other people had access to these rooms for the last couple of hundred years and how much in taxes has been paid by the people to fund it. Although it is beautiful, it seems very wasteful and unfair.

Lidia: In 1992 a major fire broke out at Windsor castle causing significant damage which would require costly repairs. The government decided that it should not be the responsibility of the public taxpayer to pay for the repairs so Queen Elizabeth decided to grant public access to some of the state rooms of the palace over the summer months to raise funds for the restoration and repairs. So effectively the taxpayers did still foot the bill. It has now become such a popular tourist attraction that it generates approximately £50 million per year.

Scott: That evening we took a cruise with Ian and Carmel down the Thames. We drifted past the London eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. It was nice to see some of the landmarks from the boat, however it had the potential to be very boring. Luckily there was a singer downstairs and a dance floor so after a few drinks we tried to liven up the evening with some very questionable dance moves and raucous singing. If only we were as good as we thought we were. Carmel’s version of the robot blew a circuit and Ian’s finger-point manoeuvre would have had the other passengers wondering if he was indicating where the exits were. Lidia’s sore hips were so well lubricated with alcohol that she forgot about the pain and busted salsa moves like a professional, while my moves probably had the other passengers following Ian’s directions to the exits. Anyway, we had fun!

The next day our friends all went off in different directions to see the sights outside London, including Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. We elected to stay in London and catch a couple of shows. In the morning we wandered around Covent Garden and enjoyed having a coffee while listening to a very talented string trio play classical tunes.

That afternoon, we caught the matinee of Back to the Future. The special effects were amazing, however the music was quite generic. We enjoyed it for nostalgic reasons, though and the performance by the actor who played the Doc was fantastic. I gave it a 7 out of 10.

Lidia: Before we went to see Back To The Future we decided to indulge in the mandatory tea and scones to try and settle the age-old question, cream or jam first. I’m calling it! While in the UK the order must be cream first then jam. The cream is so thick that it spreads on like butter then you add a dollop on jam. Just perfect. The quaint little cafe we chose couldn’t keep up with the scone demand, so we did wait some time for them. The owner was very apologetic and when we left, he handed us a bag with a freshly baked scone with all the trimmings as compensation.  Whilst in the cafe perusing the menu we came across a dish called a chip butty. We had no clue what this was, but we learned from our waitress that it’s hot chips in a buttered bread roll. This delicacy was invented by the Beatles she said. Not true really as it’s been around in England since the 1800’s but apparently they enjoyed the combination a lot.

Scott: After a lovely lunch at Clos Maggiore, we went to the evening performance of A Comedy About Spies. This play was written by Henry Shields and Henry Lewis, who also wrote The Play That Goes Wrong. We had seen the latter a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it, so we were hoping this one would be as good. We weren’t disappointed. These guys are the funniest writers going around, and we were super lucky to have the writers actually playing roles in the play. They were superb. 10 out of 10 for this one.

Lidia: Our last day in London and we decided to walk around a lessor tourist area called Shad Thames. It is close to the tower bridge and was once a major hub for warehouses, mainly storing tea and coffee. Today it offers high end residential apartments with beautiful, cobbled streets and waterfront views of tower bridge and other landmarks. The area is very popular as a filming location for many a film. Rob and Caitlynne joined us for our walk which we finished by having a nice cold beer while admiring the view of the impressive tower bridge which incidentally was not always red, blue and white. It was painted for the Queens silver jubilee in 1977. Before that the colour was described as a lovely “bright chocolate brown”?? We lunched at Borough market. It was very hot and very crowded. Rob recommended we try a famous sausage roll from a place called The Ginger Pig. I didn’t have high expectations because Carmel’s sausage rolls have set my bar pretty high.  It was delicious however not sure it was worth the $17aud price tag for one!

Our last show and evening with our friends tonight and we went to see a show called Choir of Man. Man o man what an outstanding show. No fancy set or costumes just 9 guys on stage with extraordinary talent. Before the show they invited the audience on stage and offered them a beer and during the show they would make their way down the aisles and hand out glasses of beer. They made us laugh out loud, cry, sing along and had us on our feet dancing. Awesome show.

Alex and Ceri, friends of Madi’s made the trip down from near Bristol to join us for dinner. It was so lovely to see them and we were so grateful they had made the trip to meet us. Alex kept us all well entertained with his stories.

Scott: After dinner, Alex and Ceri left us to go home and we waited on the kerb for a surprise we had organised for our friends. We had organised a London taxi to take us around the sights of London for a two hour evening drive. We had previously done a similar tour in Paris and thought this would be loads of fun. So the taxi turned up, we all piled in excitedly and set off. Turns out, the driver was not very charismatic and we found ourselves stuck in traffic for two hours. There were none of the lovely photo stops we had envisioned and it was so boring that Carmel fell asleep and Caitlynne wasn’t far behind her. The only thing that livened the tour up a little was that Ian had not gone to the toilet before leaving the pub and the three pints of Guinness he drank went straight through him like water through a sock. He was practically dancing in the back seat while the driver desperately searched for a public toilet for him. Poor Ian was stretched to the limits of human endurance before we finally pulled up outside a hotel and he ran inside so fast I reckon he would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money.

So it was with a bittersweet sigh which was part boredom and part melancholy that we finally pulled up outside our hotel and said our final goodbyes to our friends for the trip. Tomorrow we head home, ending another fantastic holiday.