Thursday July 9th

I had no idea how much I would miss having access to the Internet! My vision blurred, my palms were sweaty... Now at last, a hit of my drug of choice, the Internet and access to my friends and family!

Last Saturday morning we set out for Lille, France from there we took the train to London for the weekend! We can now check off Germany, Belgium (a quick drive through but Olivia can now say she has been there)France and England. For awhile we thought we might have gone through Luxembourg but a closer look at a map proved us wrong. All Olivia has to do is get to the Netherlands and she has caught up with Shannon. That will be a big day in her little life! Nobody likes a sister who's been to more places than they have!!!

We stayed at the Hilton at Paddington Square! Really nice hotel. We had a room with an adjoining suite. I did not appreciate how nice it was until we arrived at the Holiday Inn in Reims with out two double beds side by side. It's going to be a tight 4 days let me tell ya'
Back to London... We were tourists extraordinaire, our first stop was a pub for fish & chips for the girls and beer for Bruce and I. I think all the girls ate the whole time we were in London was fish & chips. The highest compliment they hand out to a chef is "these taste like regular..." Sad, but true!

The next morning we headed off to Portobello Market through Kensington Gardens, the girls played in Diana's memorial playground for a bit, very cool place. Since Diana's birthday was July 1st there was allot of cards and flowers at the main gate. It is incredible after all this time. Amazingly enough it was hot and sunny in London, don't worry that didn't last though. We dragged the girls through the market, they had more fish & chips for lunch and then headed off to Temple Station for the Harry Potter walk. It was 2 hours long. Bruce, Shannon and I were despondent after the first hour, suicidal after an hour and a half but Olivia loved every minute and made a friend. Then we rushed off to meet Bill and Liam Tharpe!!!! Yes, Jocelyn's husband and son, how cool is that! I gotta say, I loved London, and that was the high point of the stay for me. We had pizza at their place and them bid them adieu.

Next stop Bracknell... A driver picked us up at an ungodly hour and we headed off to the British operating unit of Bruce's work. We arrived at 8:30am, well before our 3pm check in time. They gave us our room right away, I could have cried I was so happy. I had visions of me trying to amuse the girls in the hotel lobby for the day. The outskirts of London are beautiful, tons of bunnies were on the property and there was a pool that we made several visits to, a playground and more fish & chips rounded out the day. The people Bruce worked with invited us to join them for dinner which was great fun! Guess what the girls had. Shannon actually had pizza, the other European staple.

Back to London... Bruce went to work with all the luggage, and that's saying something and the girls and I headed off to London for the day. A heads up from the front desk had us take a bus to London rather than the train. The cab ride from the hotel in Bracknell to their train station cost 8 pounds and the bus tickets for the three of us to London cost 9 pounds, in total, how weird is that?!?! Did I mention that it started to rain off and on the afternoon before? It would go from sunny to torrential rain, to drizzly and everything in between... It pretty much rained the whole 2 hour bus ride to London, good time to be on a bus... We went past Windsor castle, Legoland... Finally we arrived in London.

The girls are getting a bit antsy so I'm going to sign off. I'll finish off the trip in my next post.
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