14 June 2011 The lift is out of order! 109 steps to breakfast! Not so bad going down but coming up again was a bit of a mission! Tonight when we came home we used the staff lift. It is a little square job with an old fashioned iron gate you pull to close – that was exciting! However back to our day. We set off by tube to Embankment to catch a ferry to Greenwich. It was a lovely mild day so we were able to leave our coats behind for the first time. We d...

(Later Monday13th) We headed for Westminster today as I wanted to revisit some of the things we looked at lasty time we were here. We came up from the underground to the marvellous sight of Big Ben with its gold trimmings shining even though it was a dullish day. There is a lot of roadworks going on around London and particularly around Westminster. We wandered past the Houses of Parliament and admired the wonderful old buildings and made our way towards West...

12 June 2011 Another breakfast with the United Nations (full up dining room today) and off to the tube to Oxford Circus where we changed to the Victoria Line and headed to Vauxhall. We met Marie & Damien at the tube station there and then hopped on the train to Hampton Court. Note – we are on level 4 of this hotel and decided to use the stairs rather than the lift. There are 89 very steep stairs from our floor to the ground floor – there are even more...

11 June 2011 What a great sleep – woke at 6.45am, breakfast in the basement dining room with the United Nations then back to the room to plan the day. Consulted the walking book (kindly supplied by our friend Colleen) and decided to do Bankside to Southwark one. Not sure what the story is here but not many people around early and when we stopped for coffee on southbank the café’s were only just opening. We went to Giraffe’s which was where we had been...

Tuesday night we had a farewell dinner with M&N at Browsers in Riccarton. The girls were in their usual high spirits and we had a lovely time. For Christchurch people this is well worth a visit – lovely meal and good price! By this time I was starting to feel quite nervous about the prospect of the big flight but was trying hard to put it to the back of my mind. The next morning we had until 2pm to do any remaining messages, feed the birds and tidy up th...