[chezp]

“Expressions and experiences”

Dates: Saturday 3 – Friday 9 May
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (35) and DH Mark (43), along with Sue and DH Steve
Itinerary:
Saturday 3 – Monday 5 May in London, staying at the Royal Garden Hotel
Tuesday 6 – Friday 9 May in Maidstone, staying at our house
Tuesday 6 May visiting Windsor and Eton for the day
Wednesday 7 May visiting Paris for the day
Thursday 8 May showing them the best our county (state) Kent has to offer, including Leeds Castle and the white cliffs of Dover
Friday 9 May visiting Stonehenge and Bath
Resorts: Royal Garden Hotel while we’re in London and our house for the rest of the week
Meets: The week is one huge long meet with Sue and Steve!
Celebration:
Sue and Steve are coming to visit us!

Pre-trip report:

Let me start off by saying that I had no idea what to name this trip report. The name only really came to me after the trip was over. Why “expressions and experiences”? Because it seemed to sum up our time with Sue and Steve – it was full of both things, as you’ll see as we move through the trip report.

I guess it’s probably fair to say that this trip is pretty much down to us. If you’ve ever met us, you’ll know that we always sell the UK – and especially London – as a great place to come and visit. Well, heck our argument is that we usually have to travel thousands of miles to meet up with fellow PassPorters and it’s nice to see them returning the favour one day. That’s really how this trip started out, with a very similar conversation between ourselves and Sue and Steve. I think that could’ve been back as far as 2005 maybe and they told us that they’d love to come over one day. The conversation moved on and we thought no more of it.

Fast forward to our October 2006 trip, and knowing they were interested in maybe visiting one day, we got them a book about the place. Now I clearly remember Steve sitting down in a chair by the window and not hearing a peep out of him for the next few minutes, so I knew that he was taking it all in and was obviously fascinated by what he was reading. I also seem to recall him saying at that point “Sue, we are going to have to go over and visit them”.

We had various e-mails going to and forth and 2008 was mentioned for a visit. It was eventually narrowed down to early May of that year and I was able to persuade them to get perhaps slightly longer off work than they’d originally envisaged, telling them that really anything under a week wasn’t enough to see everything.

I don’t recall at what point they actually booked their stay, I do know it was well after June 2007, because that was the point at which the flights were released and I know I did some gentle persuading about possibly making a booking. I was more worried that the price of the flights would rocket up, which sadly they did for our October trip, with our flights setting us back an extra £150 when we booked them in January of this year, compared to a year earlier. Ouch!

Their dates were confirmed, they would be flying in on a flight that left Philadelphia on Thursday 1 May, arriving the next morning, as is the case with all flights heading from America to the UK. We would then go up to meet them in London on the Saturday morning. We would all stay in London at the Royal Garden Hotel in London, using our DVC points until Monday, after which time we’d head back to our house for the rest of the week. We’re dropping them back at the Heathrow Airport Marriott on the night of Friday 9 May, ready for their flight back home the following morning.

Then the planning began. I think it’s safe to say that Sue and Steve pretty much left it to me – all I needed from them was some direction on the things they just had to see while they were over here and I went from there. The plans for the various days came together fairly easily, as I tried to plan reasonably easy days before and after our day trip to Paris, as I knew that would be a long day for us. We all got ourselves London Passes, as I knew this would pay for themselves easily and we bought the tickets for the Eurostar to Paris, while Sue and Steve got the tickets to see the Lion King on the Saturday night. That’s pretty much all we needed and we were set. All that was left was to count down to their arrival...

Next: “fancy seeing you guys here!”