Thursday 16 June They were right! It's pouring down and we have had breakfast and decided what we are going to do for the day. Last night we met up with Colleen's daughter Tori and had a lovely evening with her, catching up after not having seen her for probably 25 years! It was so nice and we were able to speak with Colleen while we were all together. Coll's sister passed away from cancer this week so it was special to have the chance to talk. We haven't said ...

15 June 2011 Lift still out – legs must be getting fitter! All the way to the basement, breakfast, then back up to the room. Spent a bit of time catching up with the blog. Laughed at some of the comments, particularly those from Mike & Stu. Don’t know who wrote what though! Great way for us to keep in touch – thanks. Well I did warn Jannie that today was another walking day so we set off for the tube station which is a five minute walk. Caught the t...

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...