London

 Dear Gentle Readers

Today we flew from Zurich to London. Zurich Airport is big but not big enough it seems. When we finally got to our "gate" for our flight,  it was actually a bus to take us out to our plane on the tarmac, lined up all in a row with various other planes. No aerobridge here, we had to climb stairs to get into the plane.

As this was only an hour and 50 minute flight, I decided to go cattle economy class and scored a window seat so I could see all the action with the flight controls The Airbus A220-100 was a very nice jet and lifted off the runway in what seemed a very short time. It was a very smooth flight and all too soon we were descending into Heathrow. We sailed through immigration, collected our baggage and walked through the "nothing to declare" portal of customs.

Now dear reader, we had booked into the Thistle Heathrow hotel for the first night and we were told to go to Terminal 5 and take the "Pod" to the hotel.

What is a Pod you ask? Here they are, driverless automated little vehicles that will take you from the airport direct to your hotel along dedicated tracks.

This is the interior of the Pod, just large enough for four passengers and their luggage. You just press two buttons, one to close the door and the other to start and off it trundles down these winding tracks to your destination. They're not free though, costing £8.50 per person per ride, although I did get a ride free back to the airport the following day to pick up our car.

Anyway, we got to our hotel, settled in, had dinner, watched a TV show and collapsed into bed.

Next day we were up bright and early, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, included with the room. I then left Victoria behind and climbed back into the Pod to get back to Terminal 5, found the bus to the Europcar depot and collected our car. I had booked a VW T-Roc but when the agent found out there was only two of us, he said I'd be better off with a hybrid smaller vehicle which was twice as efficient as the T-Roc and was cheaper to hire so I said OK.

He returned from picking up the car and said it was too dirty to rent out and that he was upgrading me

to another car at the same price, an Audi AU Q5 diesel car. Very nice to drive only it doesn't have adaptive cruise control like the European hire cars did. Oh well, it will be me doing the adaption while in the UK.

I collected Victoria and our luggage from the hotel and we found a nail salon for a long overdue pedicure, then drove around the corner to our AirBNB. It's a standard three story British house with a narrow winding staircase up to our room on the top floor. Not what we expected but it was cheaper than hotels.

We then walked down to the train station, about 300 metres away and caught the train into London Bridge. We are going to meet up with Elizabeth, Caleb's wife's sister who lives here and have dinner with her.

We had a couple of hours to kill so we walked along the Thames river bank towards Tower Bridge. Some people think this is London Bridge but that is an uninteresting modern bridge behind us. The previous London Bridge was sold to an American who had it dismantled piece by piece and transported to Arizona where it was re-assembled.

There was a medieval London Bridge which had shops and houses on it, almost a small town on the bridge. It was the subject of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge is falling down" because of the many problems it experienced.

We passed this ship moored in the centre of the Thames, the HMS Belfast, a Royal Navy light cruiser that saw action during WW2 and the Korean War. At Normandy during D-Day, she stood off shore and lobbed  thousands of shells at the Nazi positions. It's now a naval museum.

This is the Shard, the tallest building in the United Kingdom, standing 1016 feet high above London Bridge Station. It was completed in 2012.

Then there was this, the infamous Tower of London. Victoria has never been there so we will visit it tomorrow.

After that we wandered back to the Cote Brasserie to meet up with Elizabeth and enjoyed a sumptuous meal which she surprised me with by paying for it all behind my back. We will pay her back by taking her out to dinner in October when she'll be in Perth for family birthdays. We had a lovely time discussing our trip and Elizabeth's work before climbing back onto the train to home and sleep.