This morning sttarted with a totally different view from the Executive Lounge.  Whereas on previous days there were lots of buses and a few cars and cabs that moved quickly, today was gridlock as there was a tube strike.

Today was also our day to visit Hampton Court.  We bought return paper tickets from Waterloo to Hampton Court which qualified us for the 2-4-1 offer.  There were three of us as S came too, but at least we got one of the tickets for free.

We did the audio tour of Hampton Court which worked very well.  One of the bests parts of the visit were the people dressed in clothes from the past acting out various scenes.  Really enjoyable and taught us lots of history.

We didn’t spent time in the gardens sadly, it was a very chilly, damp day so we simply viewed them from the windows.

After we left the Palace, we crossed the road to the Muted Swan where we lunched on fried haddock with mushy peas which was delicious.

We then returned to London with the intention of visiting the bar that S works at part time in Camden, called the Black Heart.  Normally this would be a fairly quick trip on the tube, but of course today they were on strike.  We ended up catching a bus.  This was an experience in itself during a strike.  The journey took us over an hour whereas it would be usually around 20 minutes!

We spent an hour or so in the bar meeting S’s friends and co-workers before catching a bus back to Waterloo.  Luckily the strike had ended by then so the return journey was much faster.  Sadly, though we were still too late for our final evening of Executive Lounge drinks and nibbles with that stunning view of Big Ben.

We stopped for dinner at Ping Pong at Southbank which was delicious and dumplings and other Asian nibbles were a nice change from all the wonderful British food we had been eating.

We said a sad goodbye to our daughter S, and headed for bed for our last night in London.