We Kept Calm and Carried On

September 21

Off the tour. Terrific! Our options were to pack up and change our flight home or stick around and do our own thing. We could keep our hotel room but would have to pay for it ourselves and request reimbursement from the travel insurance company. We would need to keep receipts for food and other expenses to turn into insurance also. We were not allowed to participate in any activities with the tour group.

The Lady Who was quite angry at the way this was handled by a normally top notch travel company, Tauck, campaigned to stay and since I was feeling way better. I agreed. We had already purchased tickets to two tours that we could not get refunded. In addition we had great seats on our original fight home but earlier flights not so much. Freelance tourists, we became. We have eighteen international trips under our belts so we should be able to handle two days in London. Hey, they almost speak the same language as us.

Divorced from the tour, we slept late and had a leisurely breakfast. The tour group was headed to Westminster Abbey but they would be a couple of hours and hundreds of tourists ahead of us, but we decided to visit this storied church anyway. It was tremendously crowded but awesome as always and we spent the better part of two hours becoming reacquainted with all the history around us.

Tomb of the Unknown

Poets corner is full of surprises even though we had seen it before.

One of the tours we had purchased was to Winston Churchill’s War Rooms. My GPS said it was less that a half a mile away but I was struggling with the directions. I’ve discovered a great travel resource: teenagers with iPhones. I spotted three teens nearby and asked them to help me interpret my GPS map. Without hesitation they pointed us in the right direction and they were quite polite about it.

Churchill’s War Rooms are in the basement of the Whitehall Government building. It was here that Churchill directed the country’s activities during World War II. It is an extensive labyrinth of rooms housing conference rooms, a typing pool, and communications rooms. Staff would work for weeks on end without ever seeing the light of day.

Conference Room

Radio Room

If you thought our ad hoc tour couldn’t get any better, just you wait. The “We Don’t Want You Tour” included tickets to a live theatre performance. Divorced as we were, we could not take advantage of that perk. However, The Lady Who is an expert at making silk purses out of sow’s ears would not be denied. She approached the concierge as only she could and the result was two orchestra level tickets eight rows from the stage to….wait for it….HAMILTON!

With a bit of Nany Nany Boo Boo and La De Da in our divorced hearts, we were off to the theatre and it was even more spectacular than we expected. Back in our hotel after the performance we congratulated ourselves on repairing a wrecked vacation in style.

AND . . . . there is one more day.