Last Few Days in England

Anne-marie & Pete threw a lovely party our last night before we left for London. Lots of great food, wine, games....ahhhhh! Fantastic.
A great end to what had been an absolutely brilliant holiday. Thank you, Anne-marie & Pete. xx

In a whirlwind day, we tried to show the girls as much of the touristy sights of London as we could (and that were free to see - London is sooooooo expensive!! Big Ben, London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge, Buckingham palace (the girls were told off twice by the policemen inside for climbing up the gates - they thought it was hilarious!). It was a great day out, although it took us hours to get back home as it was the Bank Holiday Notting Hill Carnival and so trains and buses were full and traffic was a nightmare.

We stayed at the Premier Inn in Hounslow, Heathrow - what a BRILLIANT hotel. It has a great bar, restaurant, children's play area, where you can sit and drink at the pub whilst watching your kids play in the soft-play area. The rooms were massive and we were only 2 miles from terminal 4 so leaving was easy.
The morning of our flight, we managed to lose a case on our first leg - we left it on the airport hopper bus. A frantic 50 minutes later, another hopper bus delivered it to us! Phew. Thank you, kind hotel hopper people! Lucky we had decided to get to the airport early so arrived at check in with plenty of time to spare, and as we were Gulf Air, we were allowed 30 kilos each, which meant we were well within our weight limit. I think we had 7 bags, plus 2 car seats, plus our double buggy, and we were almost dead on 100 kilos. Amazing! I thought we would be overweight!
Our flight was fine. The kids were great and made friends with new other St Chris. staff kids we met on the flight. The first people we met were our new next door neighbors, the Vaughan family, who have a 1 year old, 2 year old and a 4 year old. Another family we met on the flight have two girls the same age as ours. Another family have a 7 year old and 5 year old girl. So plenty of fun was had on the plane.
We were met at the airport by a huge welcoming party of Senior Management and Human resources - I reckon about 20 people in all!! And then were shown straight away to our new accommodation - we were WOWED as soon as we saw it. It is truly lovely.