OK, a post to catch up the remainder of our time in London…Neil’s feeling a little better so I got him to process a few photos for you. Again…sorry but most of these are just snapshots and not really great pictures as they were mostly taken on tours and such…and with both of them feeling lousy with what turned out to be bronchitis they were really both at the barely functioning level.

Once Connie came down with the same thing Neil had on Wednesday morning…she went off to her rehearsal and then was just completely wiped out…so we cancelled the trip over to hear the bike talk and just rested…that turned out to be especially important as her second concert was on Thursday and she needed to conserve energy for that.

We departed the hotel about noon on Thursday with the singers already in their concert dress…long skirts or a tux…and headed over to St. Paul’s church for a long afternoon rehearsal then a short dinner break then the concert. Once the rehearsal was done she was feeling a little peckish as she said so we stopped in a nearby Whitehorse grocery store and found a sandwich that both of them thought they could gag down…by this point neither of them were really hungry but forced themselves to eat because they needed the calories. After that…we looked for a place to sit and rest for awhile…luckily the Berkley Hotel (a really ritzy place) was next door so they popped in there and had a glass of Chardonnay each…that was 45 pounds or about $55…he originally was going to have a bourbon but his normal Elijah Craig brand was 120 pounds so he went with the wine and at that point neither of them really cared what it cost. Looking online the cheapest room in the hotel was 1,265 pounds…but hey, it did include breakfast.

After that it was back to the church for the concert which went well then back to the hotel where they crashed.

Friday was the last real day of the tour…and we had a scheduled tour at St. Paul’s Cathedral…completely different place than St. Paul’s church from the night before. Unfortunately, like most of the other tours that were supposed to be 3 hours…that included the bus ride to and from the location so the actual tour was something under an hour…which frankly was just fine with them by this point since they were feeling crappy.

Shots from the cathedral.

One of the many organs in the cathedral.

Horatio Nelson’s tomb down in the basement.

The central dome.

This is a memorial to the British and American soldiers that died during WWII…but both Connie and Neil thought it looks like a Star Wars space station more than anything else.

Friday evening was the farewell dinner for the choral tour…decent food and we ate and chatted with a couple from one of the other choruses from the west coast.

Saturday was departure day for pretty much everybody on the tour except us…most headed out on several buses to the airport to fly home but a dozen or so were headed either to France or Italy or other European countries for a bit more holiday. We all slept late and then decided we felt well enough to at least get out of the hotel for a couple of hours…so we headed off to Regents Park to see Queen Anne’s Rose Garden…this was conveniently located right off of Baker Street and ya know who lived there, right?

Yep, 221B Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes lived is just around the corner from the tube station at the park…so naturally his statue is outside the station.

Lots of gorgeous roses in the garden, along with a Japanese style garden with bridges, sculptures, and waterfalls.

This is an Egyptian Goose.

After a couple of hours in the park for lunch and photos…we were tired so it was back to the hotel. For dinner we wandered a couple blocks up to the Melody Whisky Bar for dinner…they just have had 200 different kinds of whiskey but the food was only so so…it really wasn’t what we expected it to be.

Sunday was to be our last day in London…so we were up early for Mass and decided to rest up and cancel our planned trip over to Trafalgar Square for the afternoon concert by the orchestra at St. Martin in the Fields…so the only thing we did after Mass was wander up the street to a pub we had not visited yet for dinner…and saw this sign on the bar as we ate and drank.

We asked the bartender why they were celebrating the US Independence Day…he said that the locals called it Treason Day instead but the owners figured it would be something different to draw in the crowds. Food here was actually pretty good and we headed back to the hotel to pack and get ready to head to the airport to pick up our rental car on Monday morning.

Cyas.