London, England!

FINALLY, I have come around to posting about our last city to visit....London! We took a train from Paris into London and when we arrived in London we got to our hotel and checked in! It was late afternoon, so we kinda had a free night, so we went to our rooms to get settled in and Shannon, Richelle, & I decided to go explore. We wanted to go shop so we walked FOREVER and got a little shopping done, but we were going to "Wicked" that evening and had to head back soon so we could get ready. We took a cab to the theater and took our seats and soon the show started! We had the option to do an optional excursion through our group to see Phantom or Les Mis and we had all seen both at least once, so we opted to go on our own, and enjoyed "Wicked", I highly recommend it!!! The show got over and we were all exhausted and starving so we went across the street to a pub and ate our dinner 1/2 asleep! Kinda funny! So after dinner we took a cab back to our hotel and went right to bed. The next morning we joined up a local guide and visited Buckingham Palace for the changing of the Guards, St Pauls Cathedral, and we saw Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey(just drove by on this day). Then later that afternoon we went on a tour of The Tower of London and we got to see the Crown Jewels, we couldn't take pics of the jewels, but they were cool! So funny thing happened here. It was after our tour and I think we were waiting for our coach to come back to pick us up, so we were just kinda chillin in a common area and I got into a conversation with one of the ladies in our group who is from Brooklyn, NY. Now remember these are people that we had been with for 11 days, so we had a pretty good feel for everyone. Anyways she was asking me about myself and my sisters(in-laws) and wondering if any of us had kids and I told her that Richelle and Stacey had kids and she already knew that Shannon was our mom, and that we were from Utah. She must have also known or assumed that were were "Mormon" because she then said something along the lines (I can't remember the exact words she used) that we were all "sister-wives"!!!! She thought we were polygamists and were all married to the same guy!!!! Oh my heck I wanted to laugh so hard, but I kept my cool and explained to her that no we weren't all married to the same guy and only 2 of us were really Shannons daughters and the other 2 of us were her daughter-in-laws! I also clarified that LDS members don't practice polygamy and haven't for a very long time and that really confused her cause she had heard of all the FLDS stuff that goes on and she assumed we were all one happy family! How funny! Anyways so later that night we went on a river cruise on the river Thames and went for dinner after. This was the last night of the trip with our tour, so alot of our traveling party were heading to the airport early the next morning! This is when we got on a train and went to Scotland for a night, so when we got back to London after Scotland it was kind of late and we were exhausted so most of us went to bed without dinner. The next morning we headed out pretty early so we had time to get everything we still wanted to do done! We went to a flea market, we went to Westminster Abbey and got to go in and tour it, and we went on a thing called the London Eye! It is a giant Ferris wheel type "ride" that has I think 30 glass "capsules" that can each hold like 25 people! It goes very slow and doesn't stop for loading or unloading, you can see pretty much all of London from up there and that was really neat. We spent the rest of the evening having dinner and just hanging out in London. The next day was our last day and it was going to be VERY long and let me just tell you now! It was a CRAZY day! Since we were no longer with our Globus tour, we had booked a day tour with a local company called Golden Tours and I recommend that if you ever go to London and want to book a tour through a company DO NOT use these people!!! VERY bad customer service and just all around bad experience! The tour was for Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and the Roman Baths in the nearby town Bath! Well it was supposed to include lunch cause that is what we had paid for. And they were supposed to pick us up in our hotel lobby at like 730 in the morning, well they were almost 45 minutes late and after they finally got there we were immediately yelled at because the grumpy little guy that came for us was asking for people for a tour from a completely different company, so we stayed put. Then he was asking again because he didn't have as many people respond as he was told to pick up, so we nicely clarified with him what company he was with and he was very rude and told us that we should have been listening! RUDE!! Then we get on the bus and it reeks of smoke so we were kinda bummed cause we thought this was our bus for the day, were we wrong...we stopped at what seemed like a million other places and picked up more people. By the time we were done picking people up, it was at least an hour later and the bus was full to the brim! Only then did our grumpy little man inform us that he wasn't going to be our guide...thank goodness! But we were headed back to the companies headquarters to meet up with a bunch of other people that had been picked up all over town! We got in our designated line and were assigned our real tour bus for the day and luckily it didn't smell like smoke, so we were looking forward to a nice enjoyable day! Again we were wrong! Our real guide joins us and tells us that because of the summer solstice, Stonehenge was full of hippies! Oh and our lunch that we paid for had been cancelled! UMMM O...K!!! Anyways this guy took us to Windsor Castle and told us that when the tour was over we were going to have a QUICK chance to grab a bite to eat...so we assumed that this meant lunchtime because our lunch had been cancelled and when we finished with Windsor Castle it was going to be around 11 or 1130. So we were COMPLETELY and ridiculously rushed through the castle and he wouldn't even let us use the audio guide because he told us we just didn't have time for that! So needless to say, yes I have been to the Windsor Castle...but I don't remember much!!! I do remember that the Queen was there...they fly HER flag when she is there and we saw her car getting ready to pick her up around back where tourists aren't allowed! So we make it to the spot for our QUICK bite and the line is way long because there are lots of us and many other people. Our insane guide is up at the front barking orders at the workers telling them to hurry or he'll have them fired, so Richelle, Stacey, and I had made it through the line and were outside literally shoving our food down our throats since we weren't allowed to have food on the bus and our guide had made it VERY clear that he wouldn't wait for ANYONE!!! So while we were standing there he comes out and says "let's go", he was off before we could tell him that we still had 2 people in line, so we decided that one of us should go with him so if he DID leave that person could get all our stuff off the bus! I volunteered and when we got back down to the bus parking he let us make a quick stop to the restroom. When I came out 2 minutes later, I didn't see the rest of my family and I wasn't sure if they had been right behind us and had gone straight to the bus. So I went to the bus and they were not there, he asked me where they were I told him that they should be right behind us so he was a little annoyed, but agreed to wait. We waited and waited and waited and there was still no sign of them...in the meantime he was barking at me as to why they weren't there yet...I told him that they must have gotten lost because they should have been right behind us...I didn't dare leave the bus area, cause I didn't want to miss them and then for ME to be the one that was lost. I told this angry man that if he needed to leave us then to PLEASE go ahead...he then goes to the storage bins under the bus and removes his bicycle and carries it up the stairs and starts riding it around looking for them...only a couple of minutes later did I see my family being "herded" by this animal on a bike down the stairs. So they get to the bus and we get on after apologizing and explaining that they had been misdirected and couldn't find their way to the parking lot. As the bus is pulling out he gets on the microphone in front of the ENTIRE bus and totally humiliates us by saying how rude we are and how we swore at him and how he should kick us off his bus right that minute, but he was too nice to do that!!!! RIGHT!!! He continued to treat us like crap the rest of the day! The next stop was supposed to be Stonehenge, but because the hippies were still there we went to Bath 1st in stead! Seeing the Roman Baths was neat...but we certainly were not about to be late again so we got back to the meeting spot about 15 minutes early! Then when the "mad hatter", as we like to call him, gets there he has flames coming out his ears cause our driver is 1 minute late in picking us up! The driver had hit some traffic and had a hard time getting back to us since they aren't allowed to hang around the drop off zone so while we waited "mad hatter" was immediately on the phone with headquarters telling them that he wanted this driver fired and how time is money and just going off about how ticked he is that he has to wait! The driver makes it to us, ONLY like 10 minutes late total and "mad hatter" tells him he is mad, but acts all friendly to him! Anyways Stonehenge ended up being cancelled all together so he takes us to some place that he claims is 10x better than Stonehenge anyways and it was AWFUL! It was basically the Stonehenge "hippy" overflow, so everyone there is high as a kite and completely drunk and flat out scary! Total waste of time! It was late when we got back in town and there were a # of drop offs and when we got off we didn't tip him (which is customary), because of the way he had treated us, but we did tip the driver...this set the "mad hatter" off! He grabbed Stacey's arm and screamed in her face, we were all completely appalled and angry! So I was the last one off the bus and I got back in his face and told him what was up! As we walked away, he was still yelling at us!!! WHAT a JERK!!! The next morning we got up early and headed to the airport, we had a connection in New York, we made it there, went through customs and we had to claim our luggage and recheck it since we were coming in from another country. We kept seeing this bag that was in pretty BAD shape go around and around and kept wondering what poor soul owned that bag! We all claimed our luggage....except Laurel...we kept waiting and it never came, well finally she caught a glimpse of the tag on the mangled bag that was still going around and it was HERS!!! You should have seen her poor suitcase!!! She had purchased a clock in Switzerland, it kinda looked like my cuckoo clock, but it was smaller and was just a clock, not a cuckoo one...well it was it a million pieces and the Swiss watch she had bought her hubby, Justin was ruined as well! Because NY wasn't our final destination they wouldn't do anything about it! They gave us some tape to hold it together until we got to SLC! So the layover in NY was supposed to be like 3 hours and right before we were supposed to board it was delayed a 1/2 hour, then it was delayed again! Finally we boarded and then we sat on the flippin runway FOREVER! I was having a rough time cause I had NO leg room, my back hurt, I was tired, and I was ready to be home! At the end of the day we were supposed to get home at like 6 pm and it was about 1030 pm when we finally landed! And that is local SLC time...for us we were still on London time which is 7 hours ahead...so it was 530 am the next day and we had officially been up for over 24 hours! We were greeted by our cute husband and we all went home! All in all it was an AWESOME trip and I am very grateful for the opportunity that I had to go and spend time with my female in laws!!! Thanks again to Shannon and Grant for that experience of a lifetime!!! I love you guys!!! ;)