London, England

We are off again and fly to London Heathrow airport, to catch the Carnival Legend out of Dover. Our oldest son and family are with us on this cruise.

They have arranged for a tour from an individual tour operator. He is one of six licensed tour operators and taxi drivers. We plan a trip to Stonehenge that morning.

Rexie and I have not been to Stonehenge for about 30 years. Guess what? The stones are still standing.

The next day was the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year) and they were expecting over 20,000 people to watch the sunrise. I am glad we visited when we did.

I took this shot of one of the local bobbie standing in front of the stones. Sort of the old meets the older.

Here is my son’s family as they listen to the narration of the history of Stonehenge. Rexie is still getting over her broken ankle and is saving her walking for when it is important.

As I am walking back to the van, I found this picture of a castle…

…on the side of a bus. Really different.

One of the changes we were told about is that they are going to move the highway that is next to the stones, Actually, the road bisects the entrance way to the circle from the Salisbury plains. Once the highway is removed, then they will have a visitor’s center a mile away. There, people will ride an underground electric train to the stones. As they come up from the underground, they will be able to see what Stonehenge looks like in the natural surroundings without the interference of modern technology. I can’t wait to come back in a couple of years and see how it all looks.

Next, time to check into our hotel. As we get to our hotel and ride in the elevator to our room, I spot something very different in the “lifts” in London.  If you look close, you will see that they have a negative 1 floor. Never in my life have I ever seen this in an elevator. Just goes to show that even the most insignificant thing can keep me entertained for hours.

Next we head out to get something to eat and to ride the Eye. The Eye is only a two minute walk from our hotel and we found a nice restaurant for our evening meal.

We purchase our tickets and have our pictures taken against a green screen. This is the result.

As we stand in line for our adventure, a take some shots of the Eye. As we stand underneath, you just then begin to realize how tall this “bicycle wheel” actually is. It is way up there.

As we get ever higher, Rexie (who hates heights) gets into it. There is very little swaying and the pod moves ever so slowly.

As we look over London, one of the neatest sights we see is parliament and Big Ben.

As we cross the top and begin moving down the other side, I took this picture of Rexie actually enjoying the experience with Big Ben in the background. Notice the smile.

Here is what one of the pods looks like. It can hold up to 30 people, but we only had about 15 in ours.

As we get off the eye, we find that we were some of the last people to ride the Eye that evening. They turn on their lights and finish unloading the rest of the patrons.

As we go high above London, we are able to see the sun setting over the city. Here are some shots of Sunset over London. (If you have been reading my blog very long, you know I love to take pictures of sunsets).

The next day we head to Dover to board the Carnival Legend.

I must be off!