12/17: My LAST Post: Roaming London Town!

December 17th in Delhi, India - a day closer to finally being home after being on the road for three and a half months or 112 days but who's counting! This wasn't a day we had looked forward to for a variety of reasons, one of them being the nine and a half hour flight ahead of us to London, our halfway point on our journey home. 

Plus, as I wrote in my last post, I, particularly, had misgivings with coming to the end of our wonderful trip, aka adventure, around the world. Steven was quite happy and possibly relieved the trip was over but I would have been quite happy indeed to have popped back to our home in suburban Denver and said hello to everyone we love and care for and then jumped on another plane right away, ready for the next adventure anywhere in the world!  

Luckily, to assuage my awakened wanderlust and Steven's love of travel, we had been talking the last month or so on the trip about where we might want to go on our next 'Big Trip' as we like to call these long, fall overseas trips. Our 6 or so weeks in the US southeast in the late spring and early summer are 'merely' jaunts in comparison.

My last photo from India and who better to take it of?! Steven and I had been staying at the Aura Hotel while visiting the fascinating city of Delhi. Right after I took this picture, we grabbed one last tuk tuk ride to take us to the Metro where we got the subway to the airport. A good 12 hours later, we landed in balmy London where we were spending the night to break up the long trip home.

As many of you already probably know, my mother was English and emigrated to Canada, my home country, as a war bride shortly after WW11. Growing up in Ottawa, my 4 brothers and I had visited our grandparents several times but I had not been back to London since 1977 when a childhood friend and I toured much of Britain. Steven has also seen toured Britain but we had never been there together. 

Spending just a couple hours walking around some of the most famous London landmarks once we made our way via the 'tube' to our hotel and dumped our stuff was just enough to whet our appetites for a repeat and much longer visit to the British Isles down the road, God willing. The evening was just perfect for taking a gander at some of the sights so near our hotel - we barely needed our warm jackets and certainly had no need for gloves and hats when we began our walk.

Photos from our own 'walking tour' of London:

The Sheriff Hotel, our hotel right dab in the center of London.

Wonderful being back in London and seeing a 'real' doubledecker bus and not just one stateside that takes tourists around a city's sights.

The fabled Westminster Abbey, above and below. Did you, like I, watch Princess Diana's wedding to Prince Charles take place there in July, 1981?

Parliament House.

In front of Big Ben, the iconic clock tower at Parliament House.

Fun seeing another famous English sight, the ubiquitous bright red 'phone box' as we walked the streets of London. The ones we saw all looked like they were up and running and not just for sightseers like us to photograph.

Photos of Buckingham Palace:

Too bad we didn't get to see Queen Elizabeth 11 this time. I have seen her many times while growing up back in Ottawa when my mother would pop by the Governor General's House just a 5 minute drive away whenever the queen was entering or leaving the premises when she and Prince Philip were on a state visit to the 'colony,' i.e. Canada!

Seeing the Union Jack fly over Buckingham Palace reminded me of the songs 'Rule Britannia' and 'God Save the Queen.' I grew up singing the latter.

Steven and I just laughed when we roamed down the street called Buckingham Gate and came across the Taj Hotel and saw the elephant sculpture, above, right by the entrance as we had just left India that morning of course.

A much better photo of Britain's flag even if it wasn't flying over the palace!

I have long been a big fan of the English restaurateur/celebrity chef and media personality Jamie Oliver so I loved looking at the menu of his restaurant located in the Victoria section of London.

Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. We had hoped to enter but there was a Christmas concert going on.

Seeing both the Taj Hotel and then the Laos Cafe in the space of a couple of hours brought our trip and ramble through London full circle as both reminded us of the fantastic trip we had just had/

When I saw this sign as we walked back to get the 'tube' at Victoria Station the next morning, the 18th, all I could think of all those people we love and care for and had missed so much these last few months. It was another long flight to Chicago where we had enough time for Steven to fill up on some Chicago-style hot dogs before catching the last leg of our flight home. 

It would be an understatement to say we were rather tired having flown around the world since leaving Delhi the previous morning. But knowing we would soon have our entire family home for the holidays and that I had enough time to still buy some gifts, bake some Christmas goodies and for us to decorate the house was enough to keep us both going in the busy days that lay ahead.

We've been home for just over a month now and hardly a day goes by when we don't reminisce or marvel about something we did or saw on our big adventure. There were so many highlights that we're both hard pressed to come up with just a single 'best' place but, with that said, we both just loved so much about our few weeks in Myanmar - the almost countless number of temples we toured in Bagan, the fantastic evening we had at the festival in Taungyyi, our magical day in a boat we hired visiting the markets and floating villages on Inle Lake - and so much else.

Thanks to each one of you for taking so much time reading my posts. I can't thank you enough for being interested in our travels that you wanted to look at the many (!) photos and read the text accompanying them. I only hope that you enjoyed being armchair travelers and had fun discovering more parts of the world with us. A special nod to 'Lil Red' for posting so many comments and also encouraging me since we've been home to finish the blog instead of just conveniently forgetting about it - I am indeed grateful to you as you kept me going.

A very heartfelt 'thank you' to my sweetheart aka my 'travel buddy' without whom all these adventures wouldn't be likely possible or anywhere near as much fun. After almost 35 years together, I still look forward to spending every day with you wherever we are in this wonderful world.

It's only January but we've already come up with a tentative itinerary for our next adventure beginning, we hope, in mid August. We're anticipating starting our trip by exploring more of the former Eastern Europe and then touring parts of Greece, Egypt, likely several nations in the Middle East and then Ethiopia and South Africa. I'll be sure to keep you posted though when the trip comes together in six months' time! Til then, we wish you your own happy travels.

Posted on 1/21/16 from our home in Littleton, Colorado.