Firstly under the heading London I wrote a list of some of the places we saw while there and here they are:
We walked or took a bus - I believe that now I sit on my bum a lot I have earned the rest after walking around London and Paris for months and months… -
London Museum
Carnaby Street
National Gallery
The Tower or London (including the crown jewels)
Mansion House
Stock Exchange
Post Office Tower
Trafalgar Square
Hyde Park and also Hyde Park Corner
The Monument
Cleopatra's Needle
Selfridges
Harrods and Mary Quants boutique "Way In"
The Planatarium
Portobello Road
Kings Road, Chelsea
The Design Centre
Royal Albert Hall
Bank of England
Cutty Sark
Greenwich
Kew Gardens
Kensington Gardens
Downing Street
Horse Guards
Buckingham Palace
Royal Guards
Big Ben
Houses of Parliament
Westminster Abby
British Museum
The Guildhall
Lambeth Palace London University
Lloyds
The Old Bailey
St James Palace
Royal Exchange
Scotland Yard - Old and New
St Pauls Cathedral
Wallace Collection
Tower Bridge
Royal Festival Hall
Victoria Station
Waterloo Station
Regents Park and Zoo
Somerset House
South Kensington Museum
The Temple
The City
Public Records Office and Museum
National Portrait Museum
Madam Trusaudes Wax Museum
Covent Garden
St Mary's Bow Street Church
St Columbia, Pont Street Church
Cenotaph
Green Park
Dorchester Hotel
The Savoy Hotel
Grovenor House Hotel
St James Park
Wellington Barricks
The Grenadier Pub
New Zealand House, The Haymarket
A boarding house in Pimlico
We also went out of town to see:-
Cambridge
Oxford
Canterbury
Hatfield House
Hampton Court
Blenheim Palace
Then we went by Jet to Paris for a weekend so I will digress here and come back to London shortly
"Paris"
We flew to Paris on the 11th September 1967 from Heathrow Airport to the Aeroport de Paris. We flew on a BEA Trident jet which only took 38 minutes at 21,000 feet going over and because of a busy sky over the channel back from Paris at an altitude of 17,000 feet. The plane ascended and flew straight for only about a quarter of an hour before we started to descend into Heathrow - up and down like a yoyo…
We spent from that Friday night (we left London at 10.30 a.m. and arrived in Paris city terminal at 11.30) didn't take long at all. We stayed until Sunday evening. We requested an earlier flight back so they charted us all an additional two pounds 5 shillings each for a the earlier flight and boy was my mother pissed off (her behaviour is for another blog altogether)…lol
Eiffel Tower
UNESCO Building
Louvre
Sacre Coeur
Petit Palais
Rodin Museum
The Palace of Versailles
Grand Trianon
Petit Trianon
Museum of Carrages
Watermill and farm of Mare Antoinette - also the Hamlet
Comique we saw an opera called Werther
Folies Bergere
Crazy Horse Salon
Lido
Moulin Rou;ge
Fontainbleau
Etoile
Champs Elysees
Paris Opera House
Arc de Triomphe 1 and 11
Madeleine
Natre Dame
(p.s. I got hives from the wine I drank)
Notre Dame
George V Hotel
After collecting our bags from the bus we had arrived - the air terminal was just along from the Eiffel Tower on the left bank so we had a magnificent view of Paris riding along in the taxi we had hailed.
The hotel we had booked was not up to scratch it was a tad dingy and slightly dirty (no cleaner on site I would imagine) and they didn't seem to care it was called the Bel Air Hotel, 5 Rue Rampon, Paris X1. We had bed and breakfast for 17 shillings each. The breakfast consisted of a lump of bread and pat of butter or a croissant, hot milk with our coffee - I could swear I lost 10 pounds in weight without the English breakfasts we were used to…lol
Then it was out to sightsee - the Champs Elysees had some georgeous cafes so we usually had lunch there, a club sandwich from 4 francs which was about six shillings (cheap but delicious food) Our favourite café was on the left hand side of the road walking down towards to Lido.
On the Friday afternoon my mother, Nora (who came with us) went shopping mostly window shopping though as we didn't have much money (Richard went his own way for the afternoon) we were all meeting up at the hotel at dinner time to get dressed to go out. Mother did purchase one fantastic item (which I still have today) was a set of gold lame place mats for 6 at a dining room table, lacey and absolutely beautiful. p.s. I'm going to use them next month when I have my 72nd birthday party (that’s another potential blog as I'm totally over Covid 19 and want to PARTY and feel refreshed hence a birthday bash)
We all ended up splitting up and I lost the other two and ended up meeting with Richard we both turned up at the Sacre Couere (spelling my downfall) you could purchase tapes and listen in English about the church which was a great idea. I looked around the church which was totally mind blowing and I noticed a young man standing listening to a tape and we smiled at each other and decided to talk about what we were seeing. That was how I med John Little a young Scottish lad who was working for an American oil company in Paris. As I had lost the other 3 by now I decided to have a drink with John and we walked down the stairs (there are a lot of them up to the church) and we went into a bar at the bottom of the hill and had a couple of glasses of wine. That’s when he asked me out to dinner that evening, I said yes but had to ask my mother if it would be okay to dish the dinner plans we already had as it happened when we all met back at the hotel John was instandly liked by all three and both mum and Nora thought he was a bit of a heart throb with dark curly hair, tall with a great scottish accent. He was about 35 and I was only 18 but I saw to harm no foul in going out with him in a strange land and not knowing anything much about him.
He took me to dinner at a great restaurant and then we took a taxi to a night club called the Crazy Horse. Now that’s a total blog story of its own. I never saw him again after he took me back to the hotel but I will always remember how kind and what a gentleman he was. I'm missing out bits of this story and will have to leave it here as I think I've done my 800 words and will write a second instalment tomorrow for you guys to read. All the fine print
Cheers and best wishes (stay safe)
