A Royal Dalliance (Day 3)

Finally sleeping through the night, I made my way to the greasy breakfast supplied by the hostel, packed up, and left. Since Marty was only arriving at 1:45, I had three hours to kill. I decided to head out to our bed and breakfast in southern London to dump my stuff.


My feet in Brixton…a real grotty place. Thankfully it was only a stop along the way.

After my hour-long journey from the hostel, I arrived in Penge – my home for the next week.









The room wasn’t ready when I arrived so they stuck me in the garden conservatory. It was such a cute little place and everyone was really friendly. They gave us a room on the top floor with three twin beds…not sure how that happened, but it was fine enough as the third bed served as a luggage dump. After catching up on the Internet that I had been sorely missing the last two days, I went to go pick up Marty at Heathrow. Since the last two days were insanely busy, we just relaxed until evening.


Lee Majors and the sign language feature lady





We met Lizzy at Victoria station at six and headed over to Buckingham Palace.


The Queen was home as the flag was up.


Victoria Memorial Fountain in front of the Palace

We were about to leave the Palace when we noticed there were about 10-15 police on police scooters and there was a guard near a gate opening holding a machine gun. We figured this was normal and perhaps a dignitary was visiting the Queen. We were about to cross in front of the opening of the gate and a police told us to “Stay back!” Immediately, the barrier in front of the gate drops and tearing around the corner comes a police escort with the lights flashing. Following behind, is a black luxury sedan (could have been a limo; I don’t remember) with tinted windows and blue lights in the grill. They were moving so fast that we could only see through the back window as they were driving away. However, through that window, we were 99 percent sure we saw what can only be described as Prince William. Lizzy and I looked at each other with our mouths gaping.

We headed through Green Park beside the Palace and headed down Picadilly towards Picadilly Circus, stopping along the way to admire the sights of Mahiki (the Princes’ nightclub of choice) and the extremely posh Fortnum and Masons where we briefly stopped to admire the wares.


Picadilly Circus

After arriving in Leicester Square, we met up with Robin and dined at an Italian joint called Fioli’s. Calling it a night, we headed back to Penge with snacks from Marks & Spencer’s in tow.

Tomorrow I get back to the insanity and visiting as many places as I can cram in a day. Whee! I love London.