Robert and Kile and their friend Barbara started they journey by first heading to London. We wanted to break up the long flight by spending a few days in the U.K. before going on to Africa. The original plan was to have Rob take us to the city of York for one day to see where his family came from. Unfortunately, Rob's illness over the summer made it too difficult from him to do the extensive walking that would have been required for the York excursion and we ended up just staying the the London area.
We arrived in London on Wednesday morning, Sept. 3, 2008. After we got through customs we encountered a big mess at the taxi cab ranks. Some sort of accident had occurred that was preventing cabs from getting to the airport and there were huge long lines of people waiting. We got lucky. A black cab had been ordered for someone who didn't show up and the driver (who was also the owner of a cab company) needed a fare.
Rob had arranged for Barb and us to share a two-bedroom short-stay apartment in the heart of London, not too far from the river. It was a very nice place and we liked it a lot.
On Wednesday evening we met a 4th member of our group, Dennis Setlock, who had been in London for several days. We had dinner in the theater district, where we were destined to return two days later. On Thursday we had an excursion down the Thames to Greenwich where we looked around at the Maritime museum. They had a particularly interesting exhibit on Lord Nelson. We had dinner that evening at an Indian restaurant a few blocks from our apartment.
On Friday Barb and I went to visit the Natural History Museum. Rob was feeling tired and decided to stay home and rest. That evening we went to a nice Italian restaurant in the theater (should I say "theatre?") district and then went to see Wicked. If you're not familiar with the story just click on the link. It's the story of the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz but told from her point of view. It was very amusing and we enjoyed it thoroughly.
Saturday was our day to pack up and get ready for the next leg of our journey. We left Heathrow airport on Emirates Air and flew to Dubai, where we changed planes and then flew on to Johannesburg, arriving early in the morning on Sunday, Sept. 6.
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| The picture to the right is a close-up of the Millennium Eye, the huge ferris wheel that was built to celebrate the new millennium. Each pod has room for as many as 25 people and one rotation takes about 30 minutes. |  |
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