Reservations

We leave in four days to London. This will be the first time the girls have REALLY used their passports, since that first time when we crossed over into Canada during a shore excursion from our Alaska cruise I don't think the border officials even opened the pack of documents we handed them.

The problem is we haven't made hotel reservations until, well, just now. We should have done it weeks ago, but I'm married to a last minute kind of guy. Hubby has been in Brazil, just got back to the states yesterday morning, only he flew to the client site, since he'd only have been home about two hours anyway and would have had to add a flight to his day. After I put the kids to bed, he and I were up on the phone and internet until 2:00 am. (his time, midnight for me) looking for hotels near where his conference will be in London. It was kind of a mess, hardly any hotels have rooms that will accommodate 4 people, and none of the few that did had any rooms that first night, Saturday, after we land. We checked all the areas around the conference, and around areas that we know and have stayed at before, and finally gave up so he could go to bed.

So today I spent my whole afternoon in a massive online hotel search. It helped a lot to put in a call (thanks to the marvels of Skype) to our most wonderful friend Pat in London who advised me which neighborhoods to avoid, and helped me gravitate to the one we'd already been leaning toward. He was also very helpful in agreeing that since there are no hotels in London for that first night, we'd probably be better served by heading out to Windsor that first night, and knock that off of our "Things to See" list. The next day, Sunday, we will take the train into London to the best located family hotel we'd found. So bless his big-as-the-whole-island heart Pat will be picking us up from the airport and shuttling us to Windsor, giving us a quick tour, and then taking us to our hotel, where we expect the girls to collapse. We'll catch a train the next day into the downtown London area.

Hubby will be conferencing on Sunday afternoon through Tuesday. That leaves me two and a half days to entertain the girls. The only problem is when Hubby hears what I have in store for them, he wants to come too. Which is fine, except for that whole pesky conference that he came to speak at..?