Friday July 17

Friday July 17 – 10:25 GMT
Sitting on a Virgin Train speeding through the English countryside. We left Toronto on Wednesday around 8:30 pm on an overnight flight to London arriving around 8:30 am local time. Breezed through customs and boarded the tube for Kings Cross station. Found our hotel only 2 blocks from the station but we couldn’t check in until 2:00 pm so we had 3 hours to kill. We jumped back on the tube over to Piccadilly Circus where we hoped on one of those double decker tour busses, the kind that doesn’t have a roof over the top deck. There wasn’t a driver on the top but there was a tour guide with a vast knowledge of London history and lots of corny jokes. With only 1 day in London this was an excellent way to see the main city sights and this tour certainly covered the main areas. We saw Trafalgar Square and the Nelson monument, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament and Big Ben, London Bridge and the Tower of London and so many incredible places in between. I say we but I am the only one who saw all of these sights. Calen and Valentin slept for most of the tour, Valentin’s head slumped on his chest and Calen’s head on my shoulder. 36 hours without sleep had definitely caught up to them. While on the tour I received an email from Neil our customs broker in Liverpool asking if any arrangements had been made to pick up our MediCruiser from the docks. I sent an email on to Jim our shipper in Washington for clarification and made a call to Kev at Prometheus our consignee. This is a process that I had been working on since before the vehicle arrived on Tuesday. Although Jim had made arrangements for the through shipment to London, time was getting short and there were questions about who and how would the vehicle be unloaded from the container. Neil settled the matter by taking the issue into his own hands and having the container delivered to his warehouse in Liverpool where they would unload it and we could pick it up. They recognized the charitable nature of our endeavour and gave us a cut rate on everything. We headed back to our hotel after our 2 hour tour, checked in and hit the hay for a good sleep. We got up around 7:00 pm and caught the tube to Covent Garden where we strolled around and had supper. Once the rain stated pouring down on us we headed back to our room for the night. This morning we caught the train for Liverpool and if all goes according to plan we will be picking up our MediCruiser and heading for Goodwood this afternoon.

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