Back in the USA!

Casa Grande, Arizona

I'm overwhelmed when I think of everything we saw and did in the last 18 days.  This was the tenth trip we've taken with Grand Circle and I have to say they just keep getting better and better.

When we booked the trip we were concerned because it looked like you had a lot of free time.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  There's always a lot of extras that aren't on the itinerary.  However, we were reminded to remember pacing--choice, balanced, and personalised. 

We were both concerned that we love the river cruises so much, and we'd just done one in March, that maybe we wouldn't enjoy the land tour as much.  After all, you have six different hotels and a lot of time on the Mercedes bus.  I realize now, there's no way you could have done and seen all that we did any other way.

Every day we were given a list of 9 to 10 things to learn and discover during that day.  Examples of items on the list were:  fuzzy brushes, boiled sweets, thatched cottages, love spoons, Welsh cakes, British beer, Lancashire cheese, Dracula, Harry Potter etc.  Anita, our program director, would pass out all kinds of food for us to sample from boiled sweets, cheese, cakes, cookies, Scotch and England beer.  Our meals that were included were 3 course meals and very good, but I have to say not as elaborate as the river cruises.  We usually had a choice of two entrees.  In one case, Anita didn't tell us ahead of time what we were having.  It turned out to be lamb.  She said most people don't eat lamb but they've never tasted lamb from Great Britain.  She was right!  It was delicious and everyone loved it.

We stuck to the same routine everyday.  Breakfast at 7 am and we left for a tour or traveled at 8:30.  Luggage was placed outside our doors at 7 am and put on the bus for us as well as delivered to our rooms at the next hotel.  All hotels were picked for great locations that were within walking distance of everything.

If it happened to be a travel day, we stopped an hour and a half into the journey.  There was always something on the way to see.  During our ride Anita told us about controversial topics, politics, health system, education, immigration and anything else we wanted to know.

Even before the trip began we had received an email and a phone call from Anita.  We also received a thank you card and a follow up email about our trip home.

The only down side to the trip was that I lost my camera somewhere with all the photos.  I had a problem with the computer so I didn't get anything downloaded.  Bill had some photos on his camera so we didn't lose everything.

Here's a few of the 856 he took.

This is the Tower of London Museum looking out from our hotel window.

Notice all the cobblestones around the Tower.

You can't go to London without seeing the Rosetta Stone.

The Tower Bridge has a glass floor where you can see the traffic below.

Here's Buckingham palace.  The Queen was not there at the time.

Neither Bill nor I wanted to go in the Eye after we saw it.  It takes 30 minutes to go around and it goes so slowly you can hardly tell its moving.  

We visited Churchill's War Rooms when in London and as an added attraction we stopped in the town where he is buried.  

Notice how the suit of armour covers the "vital" areas.

We toured Hampton Court Palace along with many more castles.

 There were over 3,000 firearms on the walls of this palace.

The fountain at Howard Castle was on when we arrived but due to the drought the area has had, they shut the water off at 3 pm. 

The Roman Baths in Bath were very interesting.  I understand they added quite a bit to see in recent years.

I lost the photos of Stonehenge and the local pub where

we had our first taste of fish pie.  

That's just a little of some of the things we saw and did while in England.

Turtle Safely......