London, England

We spent an awesome day with the Tovey’s today.  We certainly did a lot of walking but that’s a good thing, help to keep the weight down from all the food we are already starting to eat!  Brian got to have English beer but was still pretty conservative about what he drank – he still won’t drink the dark beer!  We meet up with Emma, Vic, Geoff, Lynn, Christopher and Darren and Vic was an awesome tourist guide!!  He worked as a policeman in London, so knows all the crooks and crannies and great pubs to go to.  We really should have had Roy and dad with us today, they would have loved it; but hopefully their ears were burning – as we toasted you!

Cheers to Roy and Sid!!!

Brian and Vic at the next pub…..

A little more serious look in this picture

The Queen mother actually was at this pub!

Convent Gardens – we had lunch at a restaurant here.

The  last pub of the day was a “Canadian Pub”

With a Canadian Moosehead beer!

We left the family at the train station as they headed home and Vic directed us home by to our hotel and on the way back we ran into Trafalgar Square.

…and Buckingham Palace.

It was a great day, thanks to Vic and Emma for organizing the day and Vic being an excellent tour guide!

We come back to hear the news that Britain has moved its Terrorist threat level to “severe”.  Breanne texted saying she just heard and that we should be careful and wanting to know when we were leaving Britain.  Why can’t the world live in peace.

Anyway, don’t want to dwell on the negative here, we are getting ready to leave London in the morning on our way to Dover to board Holland-America Ms. Ryndam.

Friday, Sept 29–London, England

We left Guelph on Wednesday evening finally on our next vacation adventure but not looking forward to a sleepless night on the plane but Brian had a nice surprise for me – he had upgraded our seats to Business Class!!!  It was great – we were able to go to the Maple Leaf Lounge at the airport after going through security and were able to sit in comfortable chairs and eat and drink to our desire at no extra cost.  Finally it was time to board the plane and we had priority seating and found our individual “pods” to sit it.  It was just great, the seats fully reclined and you could adjust the angle of everything on the seat, the headrest, the foot rest, nice comfortable duvet cover and pillow.  We were offered a gourmet dinner but it was so late (12:00 midnight) that they offered a full meal that I knew if I ate anything, I would end up with a bellyache, so I just had a small salad.  Brian ate the meal but he did suffer by the end of the flight with a belly ache.  Having to eat and then proceed to lie down to sleep is just not a thing we can do anymore without consequences.  So although I wouldn’t say I had a good night’s sleep, it certainly was so much nicer being able to lie down and doze off.  I actually think I slept longer than I thought as before I knew it they were serving breakfast and then we landed in Heathrow.  Many flights were arriving at the same time so UK Customs was packed with people but as we were business class, we were able to go to the priority line but even that line was quite cued up.  We finally got through and proceeded to get our luggage and found the Holland-America representative who drove us to JW Marriott Grosvenor House where we are staying until Saturday when we are bused to Dover where we board the ship.

We were both so tired last night that we fell asleep by 8:30 but then I woke around 11:00 and just couldn’t go back to sleep.  With all my tossing and turning, I ended up waking Brian up and then he couldn’t sleep either.  We figured at home it was only 7:00 p.m. (to us) and probably why we couldn’t sleep!  We ended up turning on the TV to try to lull us back to sleep and eventually, probably around 2:30 we got back to sleep only to wake by 6:00!  We decided that since Hyde Park is right across the street, we would go for a run.  It was great to get out and do a bit of exercise and  enjoy the park.  We had our breakfast and then found out they had free wi-fi access in the lounge at the hotel, so I am going to post this Blog shortly.  We are meeting up with the Tovey side of the family this morning and going to a couple of London Pubs and heading up to Covent Gardens for a late lunch with the Tovey clan.  So looking forward to visiting with family and plan to take some pictures to add to my blog tonight.  I will update again later today…..here are a couple of pictures from the plane: 

Brian in his “sleeping pod”

Brian sleeping!

This is what the pod looked like. 

My continental breakfast on the plane.

A selfie of us out for a run this morning at 6:30 in Hyde Park.

August 2014

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I updated our blog!  We have been lying low for the last few months with not a lot going on but still enjoying every day life. Our biggest news is we are going to be blessed with another grandchild near the end of January!  Yes, David and Jennifer are going to have a baby!!  We wish Jennifer an uneventful pregnancy and that we are all blessed with a healthy happy baby in January.  She is due around January 26 but if she goes a week over, she may end up having a baby on Brian’s birthday – February 8!!

We have attended three weddings this summer, and funny enough two weddings were for my maid-of-honour at our wedding, Sue Gilliam’s daughter, Heather, who married July 5th.  The next wedding was Brian’s Best Man at our wedding, Eric Riley’s daughter, Tara and believe it or not, Tara married her fiancé, Andy, on July 12, our 34th wedding anniversary!!  Tara’s mom, Dana, was 9 months pregnant with Tara at our wedding in 1980 and we were so worried that she would end up going into labour either just before or on our wedding day but thankfully Tara held on for another week after we were married.  Who would have known back then, that their daughter Tara would get married on the same day as us!!   

Our third wedding was a destination wedding in Cuba at the RUI Varadero and this will be the first and last time we ever go to Cuba.  This was listed as a 5 star resort in Cuban standards but was more like a 1, at best, 2 star.  I have never ever been on a vacation where I couldn’t eat the food. First time ever I come home to find I have lost 4 pounds!   I refused to eat any meat or fish and even their eggs were questionable.  They had no vegetables other than tomatoes and their fruit was barely fresh.  Most of the time it was soft, over-ripe and mushy and any other food that we saw, I didn’t even know what it was at all – very unappetizing to say the least.  I lived on bread and french fries for most of the week and one day they even ran out of bread so we couldn’t even have toast in the morning.  David and Jenn were with us as well since David was the best man in the wedding.  It was also very hot there – 45 degrees on some days – thankfully the pools were nice and the ocean was quite nice as well so that is where we spent most of our days!  Unfortunately though it has really put us off ever going to Cuba again although we have been told that there are much nicer resorts elsewhere but we are not willing to give that a try again!  We much prefer Mexico! 

Our next trip is a cruise in September.  We leave August 27th for England, staying in London for 2 nights, then we head for Dover to board the ship from there.  It is a 21 day European Jewels & Mediterranean Splendour Cruise.  We port in several ports from England, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, France, Monte Carlo, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro and end in Venice.  Unfortunately we do not get to see Venice as we disembark that day to return home but we hope in the future we can do another Mediterranean cruise and start in Venice and go through Greece, Turkey, etc.  This is a Holland-America Line we are taking this time.  We have heard some good things about HAL and this is a mid-size ship around 1200 passengers and that just fits the bill for us as this type of trip it will be nice to have a more intimate crowd and not one of the big 4000 passenger ships. We are also meeting up with our travelling friends – Roseleigh and Richard – from Australia who we met on our first Scenic Tour 3 years ago and we have such fun travelling with them.  So really looking forward to that!   

If you are still following my blog, I plan to try and update my blog during the trip (as I have done on other trips in the past) as often as I can.  Of course, the internet costs money on the ship so I am not sure how often I can get it updated but I can work on it off-line and then quickly publish it, so I will try my best.  If I can find an internet cafe at some of the ports, I’m hoping to be able to connect that way as well. 

Hopefully we haven’t lost any followers to our blog with my lack of updating of late!  Health-wise Brian is doing really well, so we are extremely happy about that.  He is totally back to normal and we hope he stays that way for many years to come!  His 3-monthly follow-up visits and blood work with the oncologist have all gone well and they are happy that he is still in remission.  

I hope all our blog followers are doing well and enjoying this somewhat cool summer we are experiencing!  2014 has got to go down as the worst weather year I think I have ever experienced – from our winter through summer!  Maybe we will get a beautiful fall instead!!

Love to all – Janet