That's all the time we reserved for London on our two-month visit to England!
Connie and Sandy have been friend for 30 years. They began - and ended - their air force careers about the same time. Connie retired but Sandy stayed on with the government as a civilian. As a reward for her recent stint in Iraq she will be stationed at the Embassy in London for the next three years, and we stayed in her temporary flat on Baker Street, just a block away from Sherlock's digs at 221b.
I have never really been to London, so I was ready to jump on the double-decker tour bus, mainly to find out where everything was located. Connie, who has spent time in London, said there was no reason to spend the money; she would be my tour guide. So off we splashed, map in hand, up Baker Street to see the city, rain be damned.
Buckingham Palace was farther away than Connie let on and it rained off and on. When we arrived we learned that there would be no changing of the guard today. (Wusses! The Old Guard kept to their routine at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery ever during the hurricane! But I digress.) My private guide showed me all the things I wanted to see - Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Number Ten Downing Street, the River Thames and the London Eye. Next trip we will spend time visiting each one.
Sandy knows some very interesting folks. She took us for drinks at the home of her co-worker, Mary Ann, and her author husband, Jim, who just returned from Norway. Sandy and Mary Ann have one those jobs that they can't talk about and Jim has written several books about the intelligence community. He has also produced and appeared on programs for PBS and has traveled to places that make even our jaws drop. It's not just where he has been, but when. Like us, he drove the Al-Can highway to Alaska but his trip was in the 70s, long before the road was paved. In the 80s he traveled by land across the SW Asia, a time when most Americans had never heard of those countries. Recently he was in Yemen and his next project will take him the the Democratic Republic of Congo. Talk about interesting conversations!
Yes, we will be back!
